Here We Go Again
by That One Secretary
Summary: Following the timestream hadn't worked for the Avengers, so Loki figures he might as well fuck shit up from the top. In which Loki dies, rigs his reincarnation, and steps out into a snowy wasteland 230 years older than he should be. There's also the destruction of trees with his body, a reputation bordering feral witch, (not)fun Jotunn physiology, and an attempt at..."heroism".
1. Chapter 1

(A/N) Okay, so this site is super limited but basically, there are way more characters than Loki. Farbauti, Laufey, The Entire Avengers Team Which Is Somehow Not A Tag, Strange, you name it-This is essentially a time travel fix-it fic.

Thank's for giving this a chance in spite of the lack of flexibility im offered with tagging and the description! you can find a much more put-together version on AO3 under the same name; it'll also give you a better understanding of the story's direction.

This fic will be rewriting some of the Norse myths involving Loki from a perspective in which he has foresight.

Loki is absolutely genderfluid and I'll tolerate no bigotry on the topic.

I'm not sure if I'll do romantic relationships further on, but the future is uncertain.

Though I will be dipping into politics and bigotry, the overall tone of this fic is meant to be light. That doesn't mean there won't be darker themes in the plot, just that I won't drag it out into the overarching storyline.

* * *

To be fair, he wasn't certain what he expected when he died.

Niflheim; Helheim if he was lucky. But a room so vast he couldn't see the walls, green fog rolling around his legs, and a surprised looking mirror of himself was in the low thousands.

Well, he said mirror, but he doesn't remember looking quite so…Feral. The man leans forward abruptly, and Loki flinches back, reaching for a knife that wasn't there. The man, black hair wild and coat worn, reveals a missing tooth when he speaks. "Dude, you are like, hella Not Supposed to Be Here."

"By all means," Loki says, to which he looks fascinated. "Point me to the nearest exit and I'll be on my way."

The man grins, abrupt and lopsided. "Names Loki," He says, jabbing a thumb at himself. Loki frowns, and he rolls his eyes. "Yes, yes, you're a Loki too, but what number? I could've sworn we were all accounted for…"

He turns on his heel, striding deeper into the fog. Loki pauses, considers, feels the fog thickening and sliding around his legs with a rasp like shadows, and decides a polite trot was an acceptable speed to trail the man at.

"Oh," The man calls, fog rolling away from him as he walked. "Shit might get confusing, so you can call me the Story Teller. Do you know your number?"

"Asking for my bust size already?" Loki drawls, unease raking up his spine.

"We're a C!" Story teller chirps immediately, then spins to face him with a shit eating grin plastered to her face.

Loki, because he is not a child, does not shift into a woman as well.

…He's prettier, hands down.

It occurs to him, as he watches pillars surrounding a marble podium emerge from the fog; that he might be vaguely hysterical. Story Teller comes to a stop, staring expectantly at the podium.

Loki steps closer, fog breathing down his neck with wet whispers, and as though he'd crossed some invisible line, the green floods away behind him to a fathomless black.

Something catches in his throat, stuttering his gasp as his stomach drops to his feet.

But the floor stays, doesn't drop him into an uncontrolled spiral, and he forces himself to look at the ground, praying to whatever controlled this hell that it wouldn't give way to the void. It looks like silvered obsidian.

"This usually works," She admits, and he drags his eyes up to stare at her. Her coat is the same green that lined his cloaks, with gold armoring over her shoulders and forearms. Around her wrist, a bracelet tethers a glowing blue orb that floats aimlessly in the dark.

Nothing reflects it.

Not even her.

"Well, performance issues, not uncommon." She doesn't react except to pout at him. So, they looked the same, but didn't share memories.

He…well, he couldn't work with that, but it was information that didn't bring back memories of a freefall; burning like nails in the back of his neck.

"You don't understand," She says, voice rising. "It always works." With that, she cracks her foot into it, and the world trembles around him; a muffled boom echoes from distant corners.

The podium shudders, and Loki stares blankly at the helm that now crowns it. It's his helmet, horns and all. "Oh." She says, looking vaguely disappointed. "It's full-sized. Well. You can't be Loki #616; I killed that one."

Ice shoots down his spine, and he's suddenly aware of how much space there was around him—the air was stale, empty, exposed. She continues to speak, tapping her foot as she did. "Well, I suppose I've killed another number too, but that ones the sin that will not be forgiven. Rules are different there."

Loki steps back, but a hand placed firmly on the small of his back stops him cold. He jerks, spinning around and heartbeat rushing into his ears.

The woman standing before him is nearly a head taller than him—but the face is the same. She looks annoyed, he thinks dazedly, but unlike Story Teller, appears to be made of the same, glowing translucency as the orb. 'Listen,' she mouths, and slides her cold gaze back to the podium.

Loki turns partially, watching Story Teller from the corner of his eye. There are more specters gathered around the podium now, all wearing his face—some look more travel worn than others. Ones sporting a beard. He thinks there might even be a child, but they're hiding behind the leg of a tired looking teen.

Story Teller's picked up the helm, looking it over—then, she finds the seams and disassembles the helmet with a triumphant cry.

"Found it! The numbers on the inside. Weird place to inscribe it but—Oh, maybe you are supposed to be here. Earth #199999, huh?" She turns to face him, eyes glowing an unworldly green. "Your reincarnation isn't scheduled for another era. So why are you awake?"

She walks forward, and this time when Loki retreats the woman doesn't stop him. Story Teller notices her though, waving—the woman closes her eyes and dissipates. With her, the rest began to fall away, eyes slipping shut with soundless sighs.

"Reincarnation?" Loki asks, then, belatedly: "Where am I?"

"Well, you're dead, obviously. I don't know where we are, but all those blue thingies? Our souls, stories, each time we die we come here and I record them before they can be forgotten. God of Lies, God of Stories, same thing, y'know?"

He didn't.

"I'm different, alive. Everyone you just saw, though…Probably you in a past life. Probably. Some are separate, like me. Depends on your number. The woman behind you was from Earth #3490. Either way, you should be asleep. Only the ones who are going to reincarnate soon wake up, but you've literally just died, so."

She spreads her arms out, still eyeing him curiously, a vague smile on her lips. "Any questions?"

Loki's heart had never stopped racing, not really, but this time the blood is pressing so hard against his ears he's dizzied by the force of it.

"What happens if I don't sleep?" "You will, soon enough." Loki licks his lips, tries to put more weight on his heels, anything to ground him to this dream-like scape. "What if I am supposed to be reincarnated, right now? What would happen?"

She shrugs again. "Dunno, never died and reincarnated. I died and possessed a kid though: From what I could tell, he didn't remember shit, pretty happy. A fresh start, basically."

A fresh start. Possessed a kid?

"You…possessed someone?" "Oh, I wouldn't recommend it, terrible business, but that's my story…What's yours?"

"You remembered though," Loki presses, ignoring her, and Story Teller narrows her eyes, lips curling a bit.

"…You can't do it. Not the way I did." She says, but she hasn't left, still standing here in an abyss of black and watching him with a calculating gleam caught in the corners of her eyes; tugging at her lips.

"You had to possess someone, which means your form wasn't corporeal at the time—but you had to have had a way to exit this place." "Maybe," She says, tilting her head back to hide the grin rapidly overtaking her face.

'she's excited,' He realizes. Not plotting against him or trying to stop him, and the hope burns like sawdust in the base of his throat; the same thing that had choked him before Thanos could. 'Please,' He thinks, unsure of who to, and it fades emptily in the silence that stretches.

"What if I exited the place fully corporeal?" "Nada, you'd have to deal with the Loki on the other side of the door. Besides, you aren't corporeal."

"I take his body then," Loki challenges, and when she drops her head to give him an unimpressed look, continues. "Not possess, as in share the same space—what if I trade souls with the Loki there?"

She presses her lips together.

"I don't know man. Still sounds a bit murdery, sin that will not be forgiven stuff. Although…Hey, you enter early enough, before the soul's had time to settle, before the story's had time to start…Hmm. Maybe. You'd be a baby though, hardly useful or sturdy enough to handle all those memories."

She falls quiet, and Loki closes his eyes, realizes how shallow his breaths were.

'Please,' he thinks again, Thor on his knees and screaming and worlds and lives falling away from him as he'd tumbled into a void; the same hand that'd folded his mind, powered by his own insecurities and desires; the one that'd killed him.

Loki was not a good man, or a strong one; not when it mattered. Not ever, Not really.

("You really are the worst brother.")

'Please,' He thinks.

She snaps abruptly, breaking her silence with a manic gleam to her eye.

"Okay, okay, okay, so, you've been dead, what, 10 minutes? that's pretty fresh, I might be able to pull some shit off with the body out there and the mind in here. Won't be pretty, might be messed up a bit—"

She raises her hands, and seidr builds around them. It feels like an inferno to the empty, cold pit in his chest, and the absence of the familiar hearth is perhaps more stunning than death.

"—Definitely going to be older than you should be—" He can feel a tug then, somewhere in his temples, and then his head's crushed inward like an empty soda can.

"Why?" Loki grits out, and she laughs, wild and clear and the bracelet on her wrist hums happily in response. "Because this is going to make one hell of a story." The pillars are shaking, but it might just be Loki.

"A word of advice from the pro?" She offers, like Loki's in any condition to speak, and he falls to his knees and screams. "Don't just do the same things all over again. I'll pull some strings, give you the ending to the story you left behind, and hey—"

He can't see. He can't see, but somehow there's that knife slash of a grin in his vision, missing tooth and all.

"—I'll see what I can do about getting you some clothes."

For the second time in 10 minutes, the world ends.

* * *

The sky is thick enough with snow he can't tell it apart from the stars; if Jotunheim had ever been graced with any.

For the longest time, he lies there, snow numbing his ears and melting on his cheeks. His breath puffs quietly in the silence. A melancholy wind howls through the caverns of distant mountains.

And he remembers.

Well, not remembers as such, that would imply the memories were his own.

He sees battlefields and burning skies, Thanos waiting and a timestream split for a temporary, desperate grab for victory. He sees the victory grasped, feels the emptiness of it in a world disarrayed and an iron heart laid to rest. He feels the emptiness of it; removed as he was from the faces and tears of his enemies.

The ache only hits him, well and truly, when he sees Thor, when he sees Asgard, and it buries itself in his chest with a desperate wheeze for breath and burning eyes.

Nornir, he left the oaf alone for a couple of years and he'd behaved like his entire world had come to pieces.

Unbelievable.

Loki sits up. He's lucky the tears hadn't fallen, or his eyelashes would have frozen together. He wondered if Jötnar had tear ducts. If they did, he wondered if they'd have cried for the ruins lying before him.

The temple had been torn down completely; ice so thick it might have been stone lying splintered. The snow draped it; a funeral shroud. Loki stands stiffly, muscles cramping like they'd been stretched to breaking only a moment before.

He eyes it over. He doesn't know why. Maybe he expects to feel something, staring at delicately carved imagery in a language he doesn't understand. Crystals lie in the center of the large, cracked circle that might have been the foundations of the temple.

They'd likely been suspended, if the twisted iron hooks were to be believed; clear and faceted and singing with sweeping winds as they clinked together in an endless song. Maybe the jötnar had hummed, the same way the Vanir did, but with low, rolling baritones that'd thrummed through the mountains.

He feels nothing.

Clothes rustle behind him, and he turns, stares at a one-eyed man with a tall, placid warrior beside him, and would it be weird to turn right back around or no?

"What are you doing here, young one?" Odin asks, weary and lined and blue blood still caked to his boots.

'I record things,' Story Teller had said, a surprisingly honest smile. She looked happy.

Loki, to say the least, panics. "Exploring," He blurts, and Odin is frowning at his clothes (what was he wearing?), with a hard glint in his eye he recognizes as concern. When he'd been a child, it'd looked more like anger. "That's what I do, I, record things. Great temple, bad ending, figured somebody should write this down—" "How old are you?" Odin cuts him off, and for the first time, Loki realizes he was looking up at the All-Father.

'old enough,' Loki wants to say, but the lie is heavy on his tongue. He wasn't. What was he doing? "Its rude to ask a lady her age," Loki says instead, arching a brow imperiously.

'A word of advice from the pro? Don't just do the same things all over again.' Don't repeat the same mistakes, and what had it been when Odin took him in if not for a mistake?

'Your wife is dead,' Loki thinks at him. 'So are you, and your people, all because you were too damned soft.'

"My apologies," Odin says drily, and the small, sad smile that tugs at Loki's lips is more sincere than it should be.

"You're forgiven," Loki says quietly, before stiffening his smile into something more approaching a smirk. Odin ignores it, though Heimdall turns his head a bit. He had always seen more than he should.

Loki was tired.

"Do you have anywhere to go?" Odin asks, concerned for the seemingly Vanir boy standing alone in a wasteland, green eyes wide and blank.

He wasn't strong enough for this. Odin would offer him the same thing he had before, and he wasn't strong enough for this. He wouldn't be able to refuse, not again. 'Don't' Loki thinks. 'Don't do this.'

"Oh, absolutely," Loki chirps, and the seidr builds in his chest—its young, terrifyingly so, but just enough, and Loki grins; manic. "Not here." And with that, he steps back, and Odin stares as the boy slips into the space between worlds.

"…Interesting," Heimdall deadpans, when the surprise between them stretches too long. Odin frowns. "…Aye."

* * *

Well, this was terrific.

Loki should be more terrified.

He absolutely should be more terrified.

But after dying, reincarnating, and meeting his dead father, the fact he was currently falling 40 feet toward a tree cover just seemed par the course.

Loki tumbles wildly, his apparently hugely oversized coat tangling around him as he did—if he was reading this right, everything he was wearing was more the same, and frankly it was a miracle he hadn't lost a boot yet.

He was aiming for the ledge that overlooked a Vanir forest; one that unrolled westward for acres in an impenetrable sea.

In hindsight, the ledge had formed when one of the mountains had collapsed, causing the ensuing landslide to close in the valley—something which hadn't happened yet, so instead this rift just opened into dead space.

"I hate you." Loki whispers to whatever Norn would hear him.

The Norn must return the sentiment, because he breaks through the tree cover with a put-upon sigh and hopes he's sturdier than a cosmic "a la fuck you".

For the first couple of layers, he is, despite the fact he's got more cuts than he knows what to do with, and the rips in his coat have started to look like a dire wolf had taken a liking to him.

Then he gets clotheslined by a branch bigger than he was.

He makes a strangled 'boomph' noise, world jerked to an abrupt stop, and hangs folded over it like a wet rag.

All in all, a very 10 out of 10 victory for the Nornir as a whole; he's sure.

"Shit," He gasps hoarsely, stomach already numbing—he doesn't move for a while, staring with wavering vision down into the depths of the forest. The roots of these trees were twice the height of the average Asgardian.

He allows himself a sad little whining noise before he attempts to move. He grabs a twig that offshoots the branch and places his weight on it getting his legs up.

A bit of finagling later, and he still hasn't lost a boot, surprisingly—what he has lost is the skin on the back of his throat from when he spent 10 minutes vomiting bile into the darkness.

"Well this is lovely." He groans, and pokes warily at his stomach. His shirt is long enough to go to his knees, thin green linen that slid off his shoulders.

He'd given up trying to roll up the sleeves. His stomach is pale, purpling in a broad strip along his stomach. He thinks he might be, what, 8?

It doesn't feel like anything's broken and the only blood he's spit is from where he bit his tongue. The bruising would get annoying though, if he let it be. He just fell through a forest, he didn't need a stiff midsection to go with it.

He pauses, straddling the branch with his ankles crossed to avoid losing the boots.

Jötnar were cold.

Loki was tired. Too tired for the nausea, the sickness, the tunnel vision and the hands digging into flesh he wanted to tear off himself. 'Get over yourself,' He thinks furiously, and shapeshifts his hand.

The burden of shapeshifting was a small one, one he barely noticed; having gone most of his life in a different form—but for such a young body, the relief was immediate, and some of the seidr recalls itself to his chest.

It's weird. His hand tells him that the forest is warm, humid almost, but cold wind brushes its fingers through his hair and whispers of him to the trees.

Its very…blue. His nails are black, harder. They look like claws, overgrown and ungroomed.

Loki slides his eyes away, expression blank, and holds the hand against his stomach like an icepack.

It works for a while before the hand starts to become uncomfortably hot, but the swelling had reduced and some of his seidr recovered.

He sighs, folding an Aesir shape around the hand, and watches as raised ridges sink into skin. It smooths out, blue rapidly paling to an almost corpse like white.

Then the blood responds, and the blue undertone flushes pink.

A branch creaks overhead, heavier than the ones moved by winds, and a distant croon rakes down his spine.

Loki shudders, and without hesitation, unhooks his ankles and hurls himself off the branch—it shakes, slammed into with a furious beat of wings, and bark cracks and falls after him as the croon escalates into a vicious screech.

He yelped, twisting to avoid another branch and reaching desperately for a thinner twig—he's falling too fast, and the bark rips the skin off his fingers in reprimand.

Leaves catch him, smacking into his face and tearing at his hair till tears bead; as though he needed less to see by.

When it clears, he's still falling and the creature has dived after him—its too large though, buffeting him as it searches for a way past the rapidly dwindling space in the lower undergrowth; till with a scream that sounded almost humane in its fury, it sweeps back to higher hunting grounds.

The next twig he reaches for hits his palms rather than his fingers, which close desperately around it. God, his hands were so inconvenient why did they have to be that small.

His shoulders creak, head snapping forward as his fall is jerked to an unwieldly stop.

He's already slipping however, dizzied and unsure if he wasn't falling upward instead.

Loki hits the roots, and though his brain knows to put his hands out and try to roll to a stop, his body has no experience with the maneuver and accomplishes something more akin to launching himself face first into a root.

He keels backward, vision sputtering desperately, and the center of his forehead pumps out a deluge of white spots in a terrible attempt at helping clear it.

'Don't pass out with a head injury,' He thinks, before doing exactly that.

When he next wakes, seidr helpfully filling his vision with green crackles of energy, it's because a horse is sniffing at his head.

"You're…. rank. Very, not…good? Oh, that's a twig. You're eating a twig out of my hair. You're a weird horse. Thanks." The horse huffs hot air into his face in response.

His seidr pops cheerfully, the ache subsided to a vague hum somewhere in the back of his skull, and his ears clear with an abrupt influx of noise. Most noticeably, the horse was now eating twigs out of his hair in high definition. Less noticeably, people were talking.

"I'm telling you he isn't dead!" The woman snaps, voice lilting. "Well he fuckin looks dead, don't he?" "Oh, for the love of—If we ran over everyone who looked dead, you'd be road kill you goddamn bumpkin."

"At this rate," Loki wheezes, attempting to sit up, "you could just wait for me to die."

The horse, unimpressed by his movement, shoves him back down because it's a wretched creature and hates everything good with the world.

'You probably get snapped you know,' Loki thinks at it haughtily, and it answers by chewing thoughtfully on the collar of his coat. 'I'm doing you a favor by being here.'

"Oh, Skuld tits, he really is alive!" The man leans out of his cart to stare at him, beard bristling—Belatedly, Loki realizes both the horse and the man are armored and muddy. The woman peers out a moment later.

She looks Vanir, with dark hair braided tightly to her head. There's dried blood in one of her nostrils, and a scab torn open over her eyebrow.

Her dark circles compete with the black of her hair. "What did you do boy, lose a fight to a tree?"

"Transparently," Loki answers, as she allows him to sit up with a tug at the horse's reins. "It'd be unfair to call it a fight, ma'am."

She's wearing an Asgardian cape, in a soldier's colors. Not einherjar, probably from an outpost here on Vanaheim.

"What are you doing out here?" She commands, and Beard rolls his eyes and elbows her over—she squawks, and with a single hand the man heaves Loki into the cart. His other is broken, but unbandaged.

Loki just lets him do it, not even trying to pretend like he wasn't going to pass out again.

"Oh, come off it Isa, the lad looks bad enough without you being a cunt about it!" "SOLVEIG!" "WHAT?" "Language!" "Oh, come off it!"

There's another man in the cart—his breastplate lies crumpled beside him. The number of bandages around his chest say he'd been inside it when it happened, yet somehow, he manages to sleep through his comrades bickering.

Between the three of them, Loki decides to just take it as it was and snuggle down into the oversized coat. The collar was tall enough to hide his face up to his ears.

"Those your clothes?" She barks at him again, suspicion tightening the corners of her mouth, and with a roll of his eyes Solveig snaps the reins. The horse begins to trundle onward.

"Well they're not yours, are they?"

Isa narrows her eyes at him. He sighs, and dredges out a lie. "They're my father's." He says, then adds in deadpan: "He's dead."

Isa purses her lips but nods, turning back to hacking the wheels free of the vegetation.

Loki stares at her. Granted, he didn't know much about Vanaheim's culture, but he was certain stripping your dead parents of their clothes wasn't part of it.

Huffing, he leans back into the coat and allows his eyes to be dragged closed. His seidr gutters to embers in his chest, and the green fades from his vision. The head injury must've been serious, if he'd tried to heal it so low on energy.

He pauses, and looks at the arms of the dusty, worn out coat—the seam meant for his shoulder was halfway down his arm, yet the coat hadn't slipped off. And the shirt definitely fell over his hands.

He needed the seidr.

'Get over yourself,' Loki thinks again, annoyed and tired and hollow with a grief devoid of rage; perched heavily on shoulders too thin to bear it.

He recalls the Aesir shape from his arms and calves. Quietly, the seidr stirs in his chest and with a sigh like bellows, begins to work at building the flame.

Loki squeezed his eyes shut till they teared; tries to sleep like he wouldn't feel the nausea begging him to tearitofftearitofftearitoff—

Beside him, Isa murmurs and draws her cape against the nights chill.

* * *

When he wakes, its because he had started to overheat again—sighing, he shifts back into his Aesir form. The night greets him with cold relief as reward.

He stares blearily out into the thinning wood. Isa had sheathed her sword, and the rumble of a path bore the cart—Solveig wasn't in it, coaxing the shaking horse along with a low baritone and a soothing hand.

"Where are we?" He yawns, and Isa spares him a glance. Her eyes are a dark, rich brown. "Eastbend." she answers, and points toward the massive, rushing river the path crawled beside. "We approach Sumac. Beyond it are the Glass Ranges, then the fields." "Where are you going?"

She's quiet for a moment, before tiredly patting the sleeping man's chest, where blood had begun to seep through the bandages. His breaths rattle with the wheels. "Home," She answers, then laughs. It's brittle.

Loki looks at her. He knows Sumac, named for the thrush of berries that thrived in the area—it was a port city, called The City of Spice more commonly. It was hours away.

"I can heal him, somewhat." He offers, and she finally turns her head to look him over. After a moment, she snorts. "For what price?" She asks drily, then adds: "We'll drop you to Sumac besides. The Frost Giants will not take what little honor I have left, despite the hardships they bestow me."

There's something abruptly, uncomfortably familiar about the way she speaks—maybe it was the way she rolled the 'r' in frost giants, but it freaked him the fuck out, thanks.

"Enough money for a meal," He says, instead of any number of things. The familiarity makes him nervous, a memory he can't quite grasp—its not dangerous, the memory, but he has the intense, undeniable memory of running.

He hadn't run much as a child; not if he could help it.

She doesn't look like she believes him, but he's like, 8, what ulterior motives could he have, so she nods grimly and waves a hand for him to begin.

It occurs to him, as he calls seidr to his fingers and begins to feel along the man's chest, that he was, like, 8.

'Maybe she's desperate,' He thinks. It rings false.

The man's rib moves with light pressure, and Loki rolls his eyes skyward like he'd be able to glare at the Nornir if he tried.

The weight of the bandages, while aiding the rest of the cracked ribs, had pushed the fragmented one close to the lung.

Loki places his fingers in the hollow of the man's neck, and slips the seidr into clammy skin. The man inhales abruptly, a surprised gasp at the intrusion, and his eyes roll behind his eyelids.

The lung goes through the rib.

Loki stops being nice about it.

The seidr crackles, seizing the rib—its easy to pick out, and Loki pulls it free, ignoring it when the lung begins to fill with blood. He thinks the man might be screaming, but Isa is holding him down instead of pulling away this child, so Loki keeps going.

He mends the rib first—he doesn't seal the cracks, but its in one piece so he doesn't much care. Seidr wraps around the man's lung, rolling green through the bandages. The linen crackles from the heat.

He seals the puncture before drawing the blood out—he has to send it somewhere though, and mutters a quick apology before Isa makes a muffled squeaking noise that might have been horror and the blood spews out of the man's nose.

She immediately raises his head before he can choke on it, and Loki is, on some level, concerned about how calm she was being about unruly seidr healing. Loki wasn't a healer, and it showed.

His lung wasn't collapsing anymore though, so he mends the tears in the skin the breastplate had punctured, then ripped, when it was removed. The sternum's cracked, a significantly larger problem, so he mends that completely.

His seidr flickers, recoiling back into his hands. It had begun to stretch thin.

He pulls his hands back, but Isa was familiar, so he bites down on his tongue till he bleeds and puts his hands back on the man's chest.

'This,' Loki thinks uncharitably, as he exhales the last of his seidr into the man's skin and gives him the rest of his own energy, 'is worth more than a meal.'

The man inhales, and Loki falls back onto the floor of the cart. From this angle, what he can see of the man's limp hand flushes pink. Isa slowly lowers his head.

The cart was still moving, Solveig apparently wholly unconcerned by the ordeal. "Thank you," She says, quiet, and her armor creaks as she smooths the hair away from the man's forehead.

Loki lets his head loll back. "What's your name?" She asks, and with the manners of a former prince of Asgard, the charming trickster, the Silvertongue—he passes out.

* * *

The boots are ridiculous. Loki steps out of them, not even needing to tug them off, and hoists them over his shoulder with a sigh. The coat dragged as he walked, so it was folded over his arm—now that he had some light to go by, he realized it wasn't black. It was scorched though, as though Story Teller had dragged it through Muspellheim before dumping it into his arms with a 'DO NOT RETURN' tag.

The ends are torn and muddied, but if you squinted and prayed a little, maybe consulted the Nornir and begged Yggdrasil for a couple of centuries, you'd be able to tell it was green.

Few realms wore coats. He's pretty sure this is from Midgard. It had a lot of pockets, one with a receipt for a single pizza from a place called 'Chuck E Cheese.' It was the least damaged thing he had on him.

"You need new clothes," Isa says, watching him fold his pants inward until the cuffs were bulky enough to stop falling over his feet.

"No, I just planned to stay in these until I tripped over a cliff and died," Loki says, employing every skill he'd ever learned to make it sound as sincere as possible.

He's apparently got a belt, with a notch that looks like it'd been done for the sole purpose of fitting around his tiny waist. The actual buckle was the size of his hand. People usually wore belts so they could attach scabbards and extra pockets. He was just trying to keep his dignity.

Isa rolled her eyes, and behind her, Solveig cursed a blue streak attempting to keep the horse from choking on its feed—the soldier that'd helped him carry it over from the main outpost laughs and undoes the rest of its armors.

"Are you just going to…walk in?" Isa asks stiffly, then looks frustrated at herself. "That's the plan," Loki chirped, as though his stomach wasn't sinking as he stared into the city, past its gates.

It was massive. What was he doing? What'd he think would happen, for starters. That he'd just waltz in and hope everything right? If he could even do things right, he wouldn't be here.

He'd be next to Thor, with enough time to figure out his mess of a head, and the oaf would sit patiently and watch him with a small, smug smile like he already knew the answer to everything, it was insufferable—

"I meant, do you have anywhere to go?"

He was getting sick of people asking him that.

Loki arched an eyebrow and flipped the coin she had given him for food. "A tavern, for starters." He says. 'Somewhere to cheat people at cards for more money.' He means.

She frowns, dissatisfied. Her nose looks like its been broken once before, and hooked besides—her features are strong, complimenting it. She has a scar cutting her upper lip.

She doesn't look like anybody he'd met when he was young.

Finally, she sighs, shoulders lowering beneath the weight of her armor.

"I don't know why I'm asking," She admits, scrubbing a hand down her face. "You aren't my responsibility. Farewell, feral one." Loki, who'd been nodding in agreement, snaps his head up to give her an outraged look. "Excuse me?"

She's already limped past the gates though, knocking shoulders with Solveig before continuing on in the direction the healers had taken her other friend.

"Feral?" He repeats, offended. The bustle of the crowd is his only response.

Someone slaps a fish onto a table, and it immediately collapses, accompanied by a dismayed howl.

Loki scowls and trudges into the city, cold wet cobbles against his feet. "You don't just say that to people." He continues, and climbs onto a stack of crates for a view that wasn't just legs.

There're multiple other stalls selling fish, largely set up near docks that braved the turbulent Eastbend.

Further inland from the river, the open market begins to give way to shops and houses—though Vanaheim was largely countryside, the settlement of it by the Aesir meant larger cities retained little Vanir architecture. Most of the city sported glass and bronze, twisting structures that towered deep in the center of the city.

'The outskirts, however…' There's the edge of a sign, clipping around the corner of a street. One of the building's windows has been hastily boarded up, and taller buildings hide it from the hazy, pink dawn. Warm lantern light spills out into the shadows that drench its face. 'The outskirts aren't nearly as golden as The Golden City would like."

Loki bounds off the crate, and heads away from the tavern—there's a larger building, busier, with soldiers trudging in and out of it like clockwork.

As he approaches, he can hear cooks yelling, and ale gushing out of barrels by the bucket. There's a woman heading the door—She's tall enough Loki wonders if she isn't part giant, maybe from before the war started. At her command, men troop into the building carrying spools of bandages and crates of medicine.

The upper levels must be rooms—it made sense for the army to commandeer a building close to the gates, within easy reach of the fortified walls.

Despite Aesir-Vanir relations, Freyr had always refused the Einherjar a permanent station in Vanaheim. The war hadn't moved him.

Loki enters the inn. An Aesir nearly runs him over storming past—a moment later, two men flank him. Their armor is undented but their capes are stained purple with old, blue blood.

Scrambling beneath two men carrying a crate of potatoes between them, he realized that Vanaheim wouldn't get news of the wars end for a few days yet.

He has to duck beneath a table to cut through the crowd, emerging next to a table in a corner of the inn—it's empty, but missing a chair. Servers spin between tables, aprons flaring.

There are so many soldiers within, that they appear to be dishing food without orders. Each carried an empty bowl for quick payments at every table they stopped by.

It was a surprisingly effective system.

Loki drops his boots and coat beneath the table.

Heaving himself onto the table, he stood and craned his neck—one of the servers was carrying a tray heaped with roasted red meats. It didn't look like sumac though.

He spends the next few minutes like this, earning the passing curiosity of soldiers and the irritation of servers too busy to shoo him off the table. Once the Nornir had stopped laughing at the sight of him, he finally spotted what looked like a bright red stew.

He scrambles off the table and takes off after the server. A skirt is tugged, a tray nearly dropped on his head, a coin given, and ire received.

"You know that has sumac in it, don't you lad?" She asks, balancing the tray as she carefully lowers a bowl toward him, his change between her fingers.

"It'll hit a bit strange if you ain't a sorcerer, not really meant to be consumed in these quantities otherwise. We wouldn't even be serving it if it weren't Vanaheim's pride—" "Thanks," Loki says, not really listening, and ducks away again.

He's counting on her being too busy to wonder at a child amongst soldiers, and true to form, she's swallowed by the crowd without a second glance.

…Loki really, really hates sumac.

He takes it like a shot, which doesn't quite work with a bowl, but it burns the same as any liquor; maybe worse.

The hearth in his chest splashes to life like he'd hurled kerosene into it; an angry guttering that manifests in him gagging on the soup and having to pause and splutter what he'd inhaled. A deep breath, and he chugs it like he hadn't nearly drowned on it.

The first time he'd had it, he hadn't even known what it was—the warriors of three had given it to him, their idea of a joke.

It hadn't ended prettily, not with Loki gagging heaving breaths and his magic licking up his arms in a terrified, uncontrolled blaze. He doesn't remember much, just Thor yelling, furious, and the annoyance he'd been graced with by them for 'overreacting' when it was all said and done; more annoyed Thor was upset with them than the fact Loki had been a twitch away from a panic attack.

He hadn't known how to explain it to them, then. That he was a sorcerer, an Aesir sorcerer unused to Vanaheim's culture. He still doesn't. Maybe he'd been too angry to try, then.

His seidr builds up quickly. It feels like an oil burn. The bowl clatters to the table, and he blinks rapidly before shuddering. He thinks it might be illegal to serve sumac to kids. In her defense, the server hadn't known he was actually a sorcerer.

Somehow, he manages to stumble out of the inn, boots and coat in hand. His seidr is still building, which meant he had to use a lot of it, quickly, and in a sustained manner. A wild, manic laugh as he falls into the wall of the inn, in the alleyway the kitchen led out to. He can see the tavern he'd spotted earlier from here.

He laughs again, leaning heavily against the wood and sliding to the ground. It's more honest this time, and his seidr reaches. Nornir, this was hellish.

There's something dark and explosive building in his chest, the fear and the panic and the grief. Loki grins, jagged and broken around the edges, and flips the coins.

He hadn't caused true, honest chaos in a long time.

* * *

Jotunheim. It's familiar to her, as she walks. Ice and snow beneath her feet, hills that disappeared beneath swift enough feet an unthinkable mountain range to the Aesir.

She walks. Beneath the ice, the rivers and the oceans stir, whispering to her of their loss. The casket of ancient winters. Still, it was a loss she could bear.

She walks, and the lands shrink away from her fury.

Black hair, thickly braided and pinned with carved bone. The winds dared not touch it.

Dark skin, a blue so deep you could see the stars in the thick furs that draped her great back. The snows dared not touch it.

Her heritage lines sweep down her body, a map of roads and lives and histories emblazoned into powerful; roiling muscle. The stars dared not look upon it.

She carried no blade nor spear nor sword.

What use have she, for weapons made to pierce? Her eyes did that well enough.

Her staff plunges into the snow and she vaults cleanly over the chasm, stretching and narrowing deep into Jotunheim's heart. She lands, and the force of it silences the restless spirits that howled deep within.

She walks.

Her growl is caught deep in her chest, pressing against the back of her throat, begging for a release that would announce her intent to all that would listen; cow soldiers and spirits and beasts alike.

Jotunheim's winds were said to sing deep in the mountains, where the caverns dwelled; warning travelers of its dangers.

Tonight, the winds sung not to her, but for her.

She walks, and perhaps that is how Laufey knew to look for her.

Laufey. Nal. She had called him Nal once, towering behind his throne. Nal, for he was as slender as a needle and twice as beautiful. Laufey the leaves, and Farbauti the strike that would turn them ablaze; silence all of Jotunheim with the power of their union.

Farbauti towers above him once more. He's kneeling, hand to the grievous wound Odin had bestowed him. Over and over he formed ice to seal the wound, but the blood poured between his fingers and stained the ice blue beneath him.

He doesn't speak. He is not fool enough to think she was here to help him.

"Where is my child?" She asks, quiet. The winds die. The roar trapped in her chest builds, pressing against her temples till Ymir himself wavered beneath her; the great lands swaying. Her fury poisons her.

Laufey doesn't answer. For a final battle with Odin he had forsaken her child.

She laid ruin to the western approaches for him, still exhausted from the burden of childbirth. She hadn't even seen it. Trusted him to stand at the temple of Ymir, still be there when she returned.

Laufey had crawled away from it. Her heart turns in disgust.

"We lost the Casket." He says, bitter.

Farbauti screams, a wild, enraged noise that wrenched itself from her chest until her throat bled. It races across mountains, rivers, plains, cities.

Jotunheim knows enough not to expect their king to return.

When Farbauti walks into the palace, the throne room is empty. But the throne itself had been resized, shaped with ice and far too big to await Laufey.

Farbauti sits and slams her staff into the ground beside it. Utgard, capital of Jotunheim, stronghold of giants; hears.

Farbauti the wildfire had returned.


	2. Chapter 2

The sign creaks, swaying as the door beneath slams shut, hinges squealing.

It springs back open a moment later, and boisterous laughter follows the man into the street. Despite the rising dawn, so long as the patrons could find shadows dingy enough for their needs, business continued as usual. The man curses, angrily shouldering past another on their way into the tavern. He casts them a passing glance. A shiver rakes down his spine. The man's eyes are an unworldly green, a laughter within that quickens him away.

The green-eyed man steps into the tavern.

A few tables look up at his arrival, expecting the man that had left. Instead, they find the tall, handsome figure. There's a streak of mud beneath his eye, trailing away into feathery black hair—its wild around his face, eyes half lidded and sooty in the shadows. Cuts and scrapes decorate him, fading and healing even as they watched. Regardless, his grin is quick to come and easier to stay.

His cloak flares around his ankles as he enters, hem torn and tattered. His eyes flick, searching for a table. They watch him from the corners of their eyes, almost bemused at the state of him.

Despite the twig in his hair, he prowls forward with all the confidence in the Nine, worn boots soundless against the sticky, unlit floor.

He looks downright feral.

"Mind if I join you?" He asks, a low, surprisingly cultured voice. The accent sounds highborn. "Nay," The dwarf says, beard bristling. "Whether you have the coin for it is a different matter."

"Not much coin I'm afraid," He pulls a chair beneath him with his ankle. His grin as he leans back on it, long legs stretched beneath the table, makes the dwarf's shoulders rise warily. "But I'd have a fortune or five for those that'd hear it."

The coins that appear, bouncing over his knuckles, were petty change. "Fortunes are worth as much as they can buy, friend," The dwarf says, dismissive, but the Vanir at the table leans forward. "You're a seer, then?"

The dwarf's eyes roll to the ceiling. The newcomer drops the coin, catches it before it goes up in a flare of green flame. A moment later, it appears, slid forward on the table as though it were part of the stakes around it.

"Of a sort," The newcomer grins, and the Vanir casts the dealer a look.

A head full of stuffing, to be impressed by a parlor trick. As though aware of his thoughts, the dwarf can feel the newcomer's gaze burning through his skull.

"What kind of fortunes?" The dealer sighs, giving in after a silent argument between her and the Vanir. The dwarf stares at her in disbelief. Surely, she wouldn't accept something intangible?

"The usual," The newcomer says. Another coin appears on the table. "Past." One more stacks on top of it. "Present." He leans forward, hands hanging between his knees. "Future." One more coin, unbalancing the rest and rolling to a stop in the center of the table. The sound as it clatters, spinning to a stop, seems impossibly loud.

The newcomer's teeth are very, very white for the leaf stuck to the back of his neck.

"It seems to me, friend, that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain." The dwarf says, and the newcomer gives him a considering look. "A wager then," the newcomer proclaims, grin crinkling his eyes as he sweeps his arms to either side.

"I'll predict something that'll happen in the next five minutes—should I be lying…" "The eyes of a seer, even a fake one, would sell for a pretty penny." The dealer declares, and the newcomer offers her his arm without hesitation. They grasp forearms, sealing the bargain, and the dwarf shakes his head grimly.

"Within the next five minutes," The newcomer says, fanning the cards dealt to him, "an Aesir will find a fish in his boot." The dwarf blinks. The dealer arches a brow. The Vanir grins so broad his dimples look like they've been painted on.

"…Alright. What would we call you, friend?" The newcomer pauses, tilting his head. His eyes, the dwarf notes, are blanker than jade. "Loki." He answers. The dwarf nods and sets down the first card.

An Aesir finds a fish in his boot. The man had leapt to his feet, reaching for the knife in the back of it—instead, he'd pulled out a fish and the screech as it thunked heavily to the table had pierced through every ear in the tavern. Immediately, the illusion fizzled out in a shimmering wave of green, but by then the man was pinned to the floor by about 7 others who didn't much care.

"You've lost already," The dealer drawls, and Loki gave her a slow blink. "I don't recall claiming what kind of fish he'd find, do you?" Her eyes narrow, turning to flint.

The Vanir scowls and lays down his card. "Alright, but that means all your other fortunes are illusions too, aren't they?"

"Call," Loki says instead of answering, and triumphantly, the Vanir flips his card over—the dwarf, who'd played before him, flipped his over as well. The Vanir had played a Queen, the dwarf an Einherjar. The Vanir takes the Einherjar, adding it to his hand.

Loki slides his coins over to the Vanir, then tilts his head, eyelashes fluttering. "You're going to be hit by a chair." The Vanir scowls. "Your fortunes are worth as much as—"

The dwarf's eyes widen, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the window—he ducks hard, hands splayed against the table, and the Vanir eats the chair with an almost comical 'whump!'. He slams into the floor, skidding several feet, and the chair tumbles over his head and takes down another by the knees.

The dwarf sits up immediately, turning to stare at the man who'd thrown it.

"No foul play on that one," The dealer says without looking, and plays her card. "Call," Loki says again, and she slides him a piece of her stakes without bothering to show her card.

Loki shows it, a rat, and adds it to his hand. He then leans over to the Vanir, who groans and sits up on his side.

"You need to draw your next two," Loki says, then looks delighted when he gets a rude gesture shoved in his face. "I don't think I want you telling my fortunes, friend." The dwarf says drily. Loki smirks at him, and without breaking eye contact, plays two cards.

The dwarf doesn't call.

4 rounds later, and Loki slides all of his winnings to the dealer. A Valkyrie lies in front of him, but the Vanir, who'd played before him, had flipped his card to reveal a boar.

"Your hair will change color in the next 10 minutes."

They'd continued to play, until Loki calls the dealer and collects another rat, all of his winnings, and a portion of hers.

"Oh," The dwarf says, and she looks up at him, and then her head cracks into the table with a noise like thunder and the man who'd elbowed her jerks around, spilling a tankard of thick, brown liquid into her golden locks.

Loki laughed, a clear, ringing noise, and the dealer put a knife through the man who'd spilled its hand.

He shrieks, the knife goes through the wood of it, and with a roar the barmaid storms toward them and drags the dealer up by the collar. "That's my tankard!" She'd roared, shaking the dealer. Loki held a finger to his lips and winked at the dwarf, who froze with dread where he sat.

Loki whistles. Except the noise emerges on the other side of the tavern, only to be followed by a stinging slapping noise the dwarf felt in his bones.

Moments later, Loki's picking the dealer off the floor, the barmaid's halfway out the window, and there's an infuriated red headed sorceress that's set a man's braid on fire as she holds him face down into his soup.

"We're not done playing," Loki tells the dealer, and this time when she looks at him, her eyes are too wide to be flinty.

Loki calls the Vanir's hand, and collects a field along with his coin. The dwarf frowns.

Loki had picked up 2 rats, but lost a Valkyrie—that meant he'd have to have picked up an Einherjar as well, and with a field he was uncomfortably close to a winning hand. He'd lost twice when he called, so had drawn 4 extra cards.

The dealer makes eye contact with the dwarf, then closes her fan of cards, tapping it against the table into a neat stack. She was ducking out, with 30 percent more than she'd started with.

Loki plays two cards. The dwarf stares at them, almost closes the fan of cards. "Call," He says, when its clear the Vanir won't, and Loki leans back in his chair with a sigh, flipping over the pair. It was a King and Queen. He slides half his winnings to the dwarf, who closes his fan of cards immediately.

Loki collects the dealer's last played card: the world serpent.

The Vanir glares furiously at the dwarf, unable to duck out unless another hand was played. Loki flicks his wrist, and the cards spread neatly:

Einherjar, king, rat, world serpent, field.

He takes the Vanir's winnings; it disappears with a turn of his wrist. The dealer doesn't wait for him to bow out, already headed for the exit. "What are you?" The dwarf asks him, because he was either a creature of the forest or one fucking hell of a conman. Loki grins, shoves his hands into the pockets of his tattered coat. He looked completely untouched.

The table behind him was on fire.

Fuck, even the goddamn twig was right as rain. "Well," He says after a pause, voice deadpan. "I was called feral earlier today."

It's the only honest thing to come out of him since he'd joined.

* * *

Loki saunters out of the tavern, catching a glimpse of himself in the darkened windows of the apothecary beside it.

He immediately stops to remove the twig from his hair, scrubbing at the streak of mud—it looked like the scrapes he'd gotten from the forest had already healed. He wasn't used to looking like such a…mess.

Someone whistles at him, which only serves to remind him he needed weapons.

His hair was too dark and mane-like to tell, but he thinks it might be matted with mud in some places. He runs his hands through it anyways, sweeping it away from his forehead and tucking it behind his ears to try and keep it there.

Belatedly, he realizes he was pouting, and immediately thins his lips and straightens his back. Right. Bath, food that didn't try to immolate him, clothes, and weapons.

It helps, to be in this form. Everything seems less massive.

He continues onward, mood dampened and trying to bury himself in the collar of his coat. More shops opened as the morn approached golden, cloudy dawn giving way to a powerful burst of wind that flared his coat and tumbled papers down the street behind him.

Weapons; before the strain on his seidr caught up to him.

He finds a blacksmith easily enough, thriving off the soldiers set up barely a street away. The dwarven man avoids the sunlight that cascades off his wares, squatting irritably next to his furnace.

He finds two daggers, balanced well enough for this form. There's another blade, too long to be called a dagger and too short for a sword—it's detachable from its flat hilt, and the more expensive of the three.

Loki buys it and sticks it down the collar of the coat; its scabbard rasping against the back of his neck. The daggers, more predictably, go down a boot and a sleeve.

There's a crashing noise from the alley the street behind him, and someone curses in a high voice before going abruptly silent. Loki pauses.

No distressed cries follow it, nor the sound of a body falling—not even the clatter of a weapon. He frowns. Walks away.

The next place he goes is for clothes. It's an open shop, with its tables spilling out into the street. The woman manning it has her face upturned to the sun when he approaches, her skin a deep ebony. Her eyes open before he's come to a stop, fixing on him eerily.

The sunlight intensifies, stifling, beating incessantly against the back of his neck. The building beside her offers shade beneath its balcony. He steps into it.

Her eyes slide away as he overlooks her wares. He tilts so she's in his peripheral vision. A short, slow smile forms on her lips, as though she knew he was watching. The unease builds slowly as it settles on his shoulders.

The cold wasn't a problem for him, so he spends more on a sturdy pair of boots and pants that fit than he did on the cloak. It ends up being a thin thing, meant for summer wear. He can't find anything dark in a small enough size.

Frigga—mother, had always liked yellow; had tried to get him to wear it for the better part of his youth. Then, Fandral had told him it clashed with his eyes, and that had been that.

'One of the few things he was right about,' Loki thinks, and still eyeing the mustard cloak distastefully; remembers the twig he'd had in his hair for the better part of an hour. He grimaces. The cloak stays.

She finally stirs when she sees he's made his selection—she moves slowly, considering. He appears to have passed some sort of test, because then she's standing and dragging a box from beneath her table.

He blinks, but holds out the payment. She doesn't look at it, instead beginning to unload what looks like a selection of scarves, in a Vanaheim summer.

Then, it begins.

20 minutes later, and he gives the woman a polite smile reserved for courts and people who wanted to kill him; trying to pay her around her aggressive sales pitch. "It's very good scarf!" She cries, waving the dark red piece in his face.

"Please let me pay you," He says, barely falling short of begging. "It's good for hiding knife down neck!" She insists, eyes glinting. "These are children's clothes." He tells her, trying to sound incredulous.

She leans forward, eyes narrowed. "Very good for knife," She whispers loudly. She pauses. "Also, garrote."

Loki stares at her. She stares back. There's ash beneath her nails.

Loki buys the scarf.

"You are followed." She says, and bites clean through the coin he'd given her. It smolders in her mouth, then melts. Loki is suddenly, uncomfortably aware that he's Jotun, and tries to subtly edge backward.

Shapeshifting was common amongst giants.

"I know." He smiles without teeth, and the clothes disappear in a turn of his wrist.

She smirks at him and swallows the coin. "We are far from home." She says, still staring at him with onyx eyes. "You look lovely despite it," He answers smoothly, still smiling, and almost outside of polite small talk range.

Her lip curls, eyes sliding slowly in the direction of the Eastbend with unfettered hatred.

Loki doesn't run, but he does powerwalk, cause a cart collision; and when he can still feel her watching him; jump a wall into the next street over.

Which is why its almost impressive when his follower makes a reemergence.

Loki sighs and leans against the wall beside the vendor. For some reason, he expects the hot bun to burn his tongue; sear straight through his flesh like a brand. It tastes like sawdust.

It wasn't a meal nearly large enough to satisfy his adult form, but he'd have to shift back soon anyways. He'd never had a large appetite as a child.

Loki taps his foot, considers, sighs, and turns back to the street vendor with a polite smile. He'd always preferred charm to brute force.

"Another bun, please."

"You're not very good at this, are you?" Loki asks casually, and the child jumps violently, spinning around with wide blue eyes. He looks almost offended Loki had found him.

Wavy blond hair, a ruddy face, and his hands already up in defense. The boy looks Aesir.

"I don't know what you're talking about," He blusters, before grimacing. "No, wait I do, that's what—" Loki slowly raises an eyebrow, and idly wonders if the kid was about to stomp his foot. "I know your secret!" The boy finally cries, pointing a finger at Loki.

"Enlighten me, they do get a bit hard to keep track of." "In the alley! I saw you use witchcraft to transform into…into this!" The boy folds his arms, triumphant, and tries to look intimidating. His chin is lifted in challenge.

He's below Loki's knee.

"Its not witchcraft," Loki says, miffed, and holds out the extra hot bun. "Food?"

The boy stares at him. Loki smiles disarmingly and tilts his head. The boy reaches slowly for it like he thought Loki would snatch it away—when he doesn't, he looks dumbfounded up at him before shrugging and shoving the entire thing into his mouth.

"What's your name?" Loki asks, edging away from the flying crumbs and unsure if he'd help the kid if he choked.

On one hand, child. On the other, gross.

For a moment, he thinks the kid actually might, and his moral debate becomes terrifyingly more urgent.

"Amdel!" The boy says around a mouth of food, before looking chastised and covering his mouth. He doesn't choke.

Through the relief, Loki decides he seriously needed to rework some of his crisis management.

"Fandral!" The boy repeats once he'd swallowed, and the smile idling on Loki's face freezes.

"What?" The boy looks at him like he's slow. "Fandral, witch." "But… but you're a baby!" Loki blurts before he can think better of it, and somehow manages to sound more offended than the boy looks. "I am not!" "Oh, Nornir you're tiny!"

Fandral kicks him in the knee. It does nothing. Nothing.

"Well, you're a witch and a jerk, and I don't know why I thought you'd help me!" Fandral yells, heat rushing to his face; his chubby baby face. The worse part is, now that he's got a name, Loki can recognize features that'd sharpen and grow into familiarity as he aged.

"Okay. Okay, first off, why were you following me and what do you mean help? How old are you?"

"I'm 4!" He bristles, which Loki supposes isn't that much of a baby if you considered Aesir aging. 230, which meant he already knew how to handle basic weaponry; and apparently; stalk people.

He was supposed to be younger than Fandral.

"And, no, you don't have a choice! You have to help me! Otherwise you'll be tried for ducking conscription!"

Loki wrests control of his expression, leans against the wall and considers him. This…could be a problem. Not that Loki was a registered sorcerer, but he didn't need people knowing that.

'Too fast,' Loki decides. 'Everything's happening too fast.'

He exhales. "No." Loki says calmly, and pivots on his heel out of the alley. So much for charm. "Wait!" Loki doesn't, plunging deeper into the crowd and absolutely willing to book it. His pride was togglable; as Sakaar had proven.

It'd use up more seidr than it was worth, but he'd changed faces before, and there was only so long the Asgardian army would look for a sorcerer that didn't exist.

'I'm about to run from a 4-year-old,' Loki thinks. "Fuck!" Loki stops walking in the middle of the street and somebody hits him with a basket for it.

Fandral, who had grabbed onto his coat and was being dragged along faster than he could get his feet beneath him, gave him a sulky scowl.

"You stopped when I said fuck," He says. "Mother says you're not supposed to encourage that kind of language." "Shall I tell your mother then?" Loki asks coolly, like he didn't have a child attached to him.

"Move!" A man roars at him, and reaches to bodily shove him aside.

Loki, who had a child attached to that side, grabs the man's arm and wrenches it backward. "You're dirtying my coat." Loki informs Fandral, as though he hadn't just flipped a man head-first into the cobbles for him. "Your coat can't get dirtier."

Loki might be a bit stuck on the fact he has a child attached to his coat.

He moves out of the middle of the street.

"I'll die!" Fandral yells at him, jogging to keep up, though he doesn't grab the coat again. "I'll be dishonored, all because of witches like you!" He pauses, waiting for some kind of reaction, then adds petulantly: "I need help you know, nobody believes me!"

"If you're counting on me reacting like a responsible adult, I'd suggest a different tactic. I've never heard a young Aesir ask for help before."

Fandral seems to consider that, the entreating expression immediately falling from his face. He breaks into a sprint to catch up. Loki eyes him peripherally.

Fandral, while just as honor driven and bullheaded as any Aesir, had also been the one Loki had hated most in the Warriors Three; for one simple reason: Even if he'd never realized it, Fandral was just as manipulative as Loki was.

Except Loki had been better at it.

Loki bit down on the inside of his cheek. An old bitterness floods his mouth with a taste like copper.

"It's a mystery." Fandral finally says, having decided on the truth. "And a mystery is an adventure, and you need more than one person to have an adventure. The young maiden doesn't count. Also, I'm sick of being accused of things I didn't do."

Oh, wasn't that an irony.

"Young maiden?" Loki turns into a familiar street—it takes him a moment to place it, but then he's ducking beneath a beaded curtain and praying the onyx eyed woman doesn't notice. He takes a left.

Fandral nods solemnly. "She's the only one that believes me, and she says it's dangerous if I'm not the one doing it."

Fandral was explosive and dramatic and prone to exaggeration. It was rare somebody agreed with him.

"Hey, how old are you? You were small then you were big!" Fandral asks, and Loki rolls his eyes. His age before his name?

'He used to leave the interrogating to Sif,' Loki remembers, and walks past the tavern from before. A man sees him, one he doesn't recognize. He looks fascinated.

"I used to be 1070." Loki answers honestly, curious what he would do.

Fandral frowns. "You used to be 21? That's not a very witchy age. Wait, used to—you were cursed, weren't you! That's why you're so dirty! A witch cursed you!"

"I'm gathering a rather long list of things to tell your mother, I think." Fandral pales so quickly it's a wonder he doesn't faint.

"No, no it's a great age, the perfect age for adventuring even—" He rambles, backtracking desperately, and Loki turns up the collar of his coat to hide his smile.

Its smaller than the ones he wore at court, warmer, and it surprises him enough he almost doesn't catch the sputter of seidr in his chest. "Oh! We're going to the inn! you have decided to help me!"

'He's put up at the inn?'

"No." Loki quells immediately. "I just need sleep and a bath, nothing more."

The soldier from before still stands her ground at the entrance, though she looks considerably more harried than she had at dawn. "…Sure." Fandral says, unconvinced, and sprints off before Loki can think to decipher it.

Maybe he should be more wary, but the promise of a bed is enough to make his hands shake as he pays for the room. He'd never been good at telling when he was exhausted.

Would spend days over a single book, not even realizing he was tired until Thor would try to drag him out of the Library and his legs would give out before he'd left the chair.

The innkeeper has to unlock the door for him. If smile he gives her is warm and sincere enough to make her ears go red, then the noise he makes after dropping face first into the pillows would have scandalized her.

He reaches with his seidr, pushing the tumblers in the door locked. 'Don't let me dream.' He thinks dazedly.

It's the breaking point, and he allows the coat to swallow him as the shapeshifting unravels.

* * *

He doesn't want to move. His are limbs are dead, held down to the bed. He stares blankly at the wall. It hadn't changed in the last 2 hours, save for the dusk casting its shadow through the window.

Loki closes his eyes. His next breath shakes out his chest before he gets a grip on it. "Damn." He whispers, finally allowing himself to feel the youngness of it. He sounded like a child. He was a child.

He needed Thor.

Thor was a child now too. Thor was younger than him. 230 years younger, if he was the same age as Fandral.

He's picking at his hands before he can stop himself, and then he doesn't.

He can't remember a time he hadn't felt safe with Thor. Even on the wrong side, bitter and angry and venom dripping from his tongue like the blood that stained his teeth. Even then, Thor had been familiar and steady—at the time, it had been another weapon.

'Rose colored glasses.' Loki thinks bitterly, and works his nails beneath the skin; pinching at it. Belittlement, anger, dismissive words and an arrogance that failed to try and understand him. A naivety that said he'd known it all, that with a golden smile Loki would realize how silly he was being and return to a life that stifled him.

At the end though, Thor had seemed willing to try. It's that Thor he regrets the most, a nausea that burns in the back of his throat with the ache of it. It'd seemed like they'd have the chance again, (and how cruel that was) to be—

Loki yelps, pulling his hands apart and curling around the one he'd been picking at. The pain splices up his arm, a sharp sting that dulled to a throb in a surge of seidr; crackling defensively. His fingers were twitching violently, and Loki stares at the hand.

It was blue. He's picked straight through to bone with claws. The injured hand convulses again, seidr rippling across the back of it. A moment later, ice forms, sealing the wound instead of healing it. Blue blood collects beneath the clear, makeshift scab, but stops bleeding.

Loki stares at it. Then he recalls the seidr, too worn to heal it, and rips the ice off. It doesn't come easily. It takes the skin around the wound with it.

The blood begins to gush again, but he's on his feet and stumbling toward the bathroom, fist clenched and jaw set—He realizes his mistake when the claws puncture through his palm.

The door crashes against the wall, rebounding shut, and he slams his hand onto the counter in frustration.

Or rather, into it. He was too short to reach the top, and leaves a bloody mark on its cabinets as result. He makes a strangled screaming noise, more rage than pain, and the mirror above it shatters before he can glimpse more than a flicker of red.

He sits back hard, back cracking into the tub as he slides down it, head buried in his knees.

"Damn." He says again, a wretched snarl from the back of his throat.

His blood drips quietly to the floor. Outside, a woman laughs faintly and a cart hitches over a stone.

"Damn." He repeats quietly.

He uncurls his fist. The claws curve inward the longer they get, and the hooks of it tear the flesh further as he does. They really do look overgrown. He doesn't remember losing control this much as a child.

("Might be a bit messed up," Story teller had said, seidr wild around her hands.)

He draws the blade from the sheath in the coats neck, and kneels, hand flat against the floor. It cleaves through the claws with little resistance. They end up square cut, which looks strange. The material it was made from was an opaque black, thick, and naturally tapered. He thinks it might be used for climbing, or hunting.

Reluctantly curious, he swipes his tongue over his teeth. He has lower and upper teeth sharp enough to remind him of hounds, but there are flatter ones near the back. Not entirely a carnivorous diet then.

Tentative, his seidr slips from his chest, winding through his arm. The ice reforms. He lets it. The seidr retreats, spent.

He can't cut the nails of the other hand, not without taking a finger; if the way his grip shakes is anything to go by. Instead, he fumbles wearily behind him until he finds the handle above the tub.

This far from the main city, the drawing of water through the pipes takes a while; old enchantments rousing quietly in the walls.

The water spouts into the tub with a wheeze like the building was dying from the effort of it, pipes clanking heavily. He dips his hand into it, and is surprised to find it luke-warm; until his brain catches up with him.

Probably frigid then, drawn from the Eastbend.

What would it take for him to feel cold? He strips tiredly, flops ungracefully into the tub, and immediately dunks his head below the water.

'Never mind that,' He thinks. 'What would happen if someone tried to hand a Jotun a warm cup of tea, is the real question.'

Then, he opens his eyes.

A film slides over them, plunging the world into a washed-out scape of black and white; which is approximately when Loki decides he'd had enough of Jotun physiology to last him a life time.

(A part of him, the one that had devoured half of Alfheim's royal libraries in under 2 months, really wants to know why the hellthey developed something like that on an ice planet.)

"I'm going to burn you." Loki politely informs the cabinet, struggling to scrub the blood stain out of its wood. He hadn't been able to do anything about the stains in the bedroom, and had resorted to dragging the bed sheets onto the floor and hoping he'd be out of the realm before the inn full of soldiers realized a Jotun had just bled all over one of their rooms.

The hammering on his door forces him to abandon the task, shutting and locking the bathroom. He didn't have enough to shift into his adult form, but…

Heat spreads in his throat, before it bulges and reshapes and settles back beneath his skin. "What is it?" He calls, voice significantly older. There's a break in the knocking, and the sound of shoes scuffing against wood.

"Well," a young girl's voice calls. "Fandral has been being insufferable about this and I'd rather come here with him to make sure he doesn't break the door down, or something equally as uncouth." "Nobody says uncouth." Fandral grumbles, but doesn't contest her about the door.

Loki closes his eyes. 'Do I have the energy for 2 brats?' He asks himself. 'No, but I'm also too small to jump out of the window.'

He folds the Aesir shape around himself and undoes the work on his vocals.

He tugs his boots on in case he had to run, ignoring how heavy the daggers were as he equipped them—the one down the back of his neck was now long enough to encroach onto his back.

Folding the scarf around him with a sigh, he opens the door, and chokes on anything he might have said, expression blanking so fast he's surprised it didn't give him whiplash.

Sigyn blinked at him, then leant disbelieving into the room as though looking for someone else. "Ha!" Fandral crowed, barging into the room past Loki. "I told you he was big and then small!"

"You tell me a lot of things." She says, before smiling blandly at Loki. "My name is Sigyn, may I come in?"

"Anybody who'd keep my door from being kicked in is welcome." He drawls on auto pilot, and she nods and steps into the room. Fandral was bouncing on the bed, and his brain finally kicks into gear.

He hastily steps out.

"But I'm afraid I was just leaving." Unfazed, she immediately pivots back around like she hadn't already walked in, expression still frozen in a mask of politeness. The familiarity of it punched the breath out of his lungs.

"What?" Fandral cried, sitting up and staring at Loki in betrayal. The sheet beside his knee is stained blue.

Loki walks out, and the Nornir must take mercy because Fandral scrambles out of the room without a second look. Sigyn keeps pace with Loki, and when he increases his speed, does so as well without a twitch in her face.

'She's still creepy.' Loki thinks fondly.

"You can't leave! Or, or I'll tell everyone you're a witch!" "Are you a sorcerer?" Sigyn asks calmly, changing to his other side so he could have the banister climbing down the stairs. There wasn't any use lying about it.

"Yes, and while I'm still in the inn I'd like to hear what I'm being threatened about. Please." He tacks on, old memories of books being launched at him resurfacing. She seems appeased, and he watches her from the corner of his eye as she thinks, tuning out Fandral completely.

Loki had thought he was dramatic as a teenager.

Her dark hair is cropped close to her skull—her eyes are a piercing blue, staring thoughtfully at her feet as she walked. She was as tall as he was, dressed in pale blue healer's robes.

She doesn't yet have the scar at her temple, which he supposes makes sense. He'd blamed himself for it, she'd thumped him on the back so hard he wheezed, and called it a 'joint effort'.

She only speaks when they reach the bottom of the steps, turning to him with all the gravity an 8-year-old could muster—which, for Sigyn, was a fair amount.

He'd missed her.

"Two things," She says. "First, you look super cute in that outfit, I like the colors. Second, we have sorcerers returning from Midgard tomorrow that require immediate medical attention, but someone's been stealing Sumac from the inn by the barrel. Considering our shipments are from the main city and we're still running thin, and nobody is doing anything about it; people might die if we don't have means to quickly replenish their seidr."

He had not missed her terrible ability to prioritize information.

Loki turns to Fandral, who had slid down the banister ahead of them and was waiting impatiently. "You couldn't have led with that?"

Fandral rolled his eyes. "You didn't strike me as the honorable type, so I figured if you wouldn't help to save your skin, you'd help if I said there was adventure. You were covered in mud you know."

There's that unrefined manipulation.

"You feel good at sorcery." Sigyn adds, like Loki didn't know that whenever she 'felt good' about something, it was because she found it aesthetically pleasing—as result, the spells in question usually ended with one of them on fire.

Well. He supposes she didn't know that he knew.

He sighs. "I'll gain nothing from helping you." He tells them, and Sigyn slowly tilts her head at him. "The way I see it," she says. "is that either you gain nothing or you help us float bodies on the river tomorrow."

Loki allows them to see his shoulders slump, and Fandral beams brightly.

"I like your scarf, it's very cute." Sigyn says, like she hadn't delivered an ultimatum seconds ago. "Did your mother pick it out for you?" She sounds so sincere.

Loki shudders, remembering the onyx eyed woman. "I hope not."

"Cute is for girls." Fandral declares, with all the wisdom in the Nine, so Loki turns to him and surges his seidr. It's easier than turning into an adult.

Fandral's mouth drops open, and the first expression to cross Sigyn's face: Complete, utter delight.

"You're a girl!" She cried, grabbing Loki's face to examine it. "You're a girl?" Fandral blinks, and Loki nods as much as she can, with Sigyn checking her teeth.

"A very cute one, according to you."

Fandral flushes. "You can't be a girl." He says, and Loki frees her face to eye him. "Why not?" "Because you took down that man in the street with one arm. Maidens can't do that."

Sigyn doesn't comment, more interested in checking the webbing between Loki's fingers. "My mother could take down that man with a finger." Loki tells him honestly, and his frown deepens. "How?" "Because she's both a maiden and a warrior."

Fandral's mouth drops open, a little 'o'. He doesn't comment any further, which meant she'd won.

If that stuck with him, Sif would owe her years of trying to beat it into Fandral's skull—not that Sif was, in any sense of the word, a maiden.

Loki made a great maiden herself.

"This is incredible." Sigyn breathes, checking her pulse with two fingers. "You're a natural at this. I've never seen someone shapeshift so quickly. You even remembered all your nails."

Loki reddens a bit with pride, before straightening her back. "Alright," She says, clearing her throat. "If we're going to be doing this, we need access to the kitchens."

Sigyn immediately turns, still holding her wrist, and plunges into the mess of a crowd without a second thought. She weaves smoothly, accounting for the both of them, so Loki lets her have free reign.

Fandral, who had made the adventurous choice of scampering over the tables like some form of Hel beast, grinning all the while, makes it to the kitchens 2 minutes faster.

He'd also stuck his foot in a stew on the way there.

"They're storing the medicine and bandages in the kitchen. We can change these linens too." Sigyn says, tapping the bandages around Loki's hand. "Sigyn is allowed everywhere because she has fancy clothes." Fandral explains, in the tone of somebody who wanted fancy clothes himself and was trying very hard to sound derisive about it.

Loki frowns. "You're putting a lot of trust in me." Sigyn stares at her. She didn't have doe-like eyes, so much as she did blank ones that stared into your soul. "Why wouldn't we trust you?"

Right. They were children and surrounded by Aesir that ate honor and shitted chivalry.

'I will kill anyone that hurts you.' Is what Loki thinks. "What are we waiting for?" is what she says.

"You mainly." Fandral snorts, and barges into the kitchen like he owned it. Sigyn glides after, and Loki tries not to skulk as she follows.

Sigyn is waylaid immediately, and the woman harries her out of the stream of servers whirling through the doors.

"You bought that boy here again? Really, Sigyn!" Fandral bristles, and Sigyn looks up at the stocky Aesir with a placid smile. "He followed me in here like the dog he is."

Loki chokes on her spit and enters a violent coughing fit. Fandral doesn't look remotely fazed, instead thumping her back and turning the cough into a desperate wheeze for breath.

"As you can see," Sigyn continues, "my friend here has a terrible constitution. Look at how breathless she is from coughing. She's weak. So, I had to bring her away from the crowd to replace the linen on her hand."

Nornir, Loki had forgotten how brutal she was. Tranquil expression never fading, she grabs Loki's hand and wrenches it up for the woman to see. Loki makes an involuntary squeaking noise and begins to bleed through the bandages.

Sigyn drops her hand like a hot potato, with a flinch that doesn't pass her arm. Her face is still bland.

The woman casts Loki a hard look. Loki gives her a wobbly smile. Fandral kicks the back of her boot. Loki tries to look more pathetic, which wasn't particularly hard. Sigyn's smile hitches up a centimeter around the corners, and it looks like it physically pains her.

The woman makes an aggravated noise and flaps a hand for them to go on.

"But don't go bothering my cooks about that damned sumac again, you hear me!"

Sigyn ignores her completely, and sweeps toward the crates of medicine stacked irresponsibly close to the earthen ovens lining the back wall.

"Why do they hate you so much?" Loki asks Fandral, who lunges at the opportunity. "They don't appreciate my search for excitement, or the moral I bring the soldiers! I made 10 of them laugh with tales of my adventures, you know! That's what my dad told me, that when somebody's really really low you're supposed to make them smile the best you can, even if it goes wrong!"

"He disturbs the patients but I like him so I let him follow me around." Sigyn summarizes, and turns to Loki with a roll of linen. Fandral blinks. "You like me?"

"Sorry about reopening the wound bef—what did you do? What, you never use a dinner knife before?!" Loki starts at the abrupt change in mannerism as she carefully examines the gash. "I—" "Sterilization cream." She commands Fandral, who reaches into a crate and hands it to her without looking. "Sorry?" Loki says, caught off guard. She ignores her.

Loki was not sulking. She turns her head as Sigyn works, eyes flicking quickly over the kitchen. Windows? Too high, and opened directly over the stoves. Main entrance, one of the workers? It was pretty busy…

"How much is being stolen at once?" "By the barrel." Sigyn answers, and Fandral leans over to peer at the wound. "I can see your bone!" He tells Loki excitedly. Loki glares at him.

Workers couldn't move entire barrels out of the kitchen without being questioned, and considering the inn appeared to be bustling every hour of the day…it wasn't part of the kitchen staff.

The soldiers that unloaded the medicine and linens? They all had to pass by the woman manning the entrance.

Sigyn ties off the bandage with a firm tug and Loki immediately turns and walks back out of the kitchen. A moment later, they join her. "How long has this been happening?"

"They've been blaming Fandral because he's a nuisance, always in the kitchen, and the barrels started disappearing when his dad transferred here."

Loki frowns. They exit the inn without fuss—someone had bought the woman at the door a crate to sit on. There's a gas lantern by her feet, and she's using it to look over a sheaf of papers. Sigyn picks up on what they were doing and approaches the woman.

"Skaldi, ma'am?" The woman looks up, expression stormy in a way that made Loki set her shoulders. When she sees Sigyn, the ice in her eyes fades some. Loki doesn't relax, but she unfolds her arms so the dagger up her sleeve was at rest.

"Sigyn, what can I do for you?" "If you're not busy…" The woman snorts, waving the papers. "Just looking over what wounds the Jotnar inflicted and by which weapons—it's helping us isolate how they're arming themselves."

Fandral perks up at mention of the war.

Loki frowns. She'd never heard an Aesir, or Vanir for that matter, call the Jotnar anything other than Frost Giants; except in the odd history lesson. Privately, she wondered when she'd switched over herself.

"How's your seidr lessons going?" "I'm not allowed to practice any on the patients, and they didn't let me bring books from Asgard. I'm reallyfast at bandages now, though." "You don't sound too happy about that?"

"No, no its—Mother won't be done here for a while, but my sister came home today. She's in the infirmary but when she's better I can go back to Asgard with her instead."

Skaldi huffs in amusement. "You three are really excited to go back, hmm?" Sigyn frowns, and looks back at them. "You mean Fandral?" "Him? No, the—ah, I must have been mistaken. I wish your sister swift recoveries then." "Thank you ma'am."

Then, Skaldi's eyes flick over to Loki. "Oh," She says, frowning. "I thought I'd smelled blood." 'What?' "What?" Fandral voices for her, and the woman rolls her eyes at him but doesn't look away from Loki.

"Not causing trouble, are you?" Something about the way she asks it sets Loki's teeth on edge.

Sigyn shakes her head slowly. "No ma'am, she's helping us." For a long, unnerving moment, Loki thinks she's about to reach for the bow resting on the ground beside her; despite the polite interest on her face—then, it passes, and she nods calmly instead.

"Which room were you, then?" "Pardon?" "Your room. I'll take care of it." Her eyes flick to the bandage around Loki's hand, who covers it and draws it beneath the cloak. "A child shouldn't have to pay for their own room." She adds belatedly.

You had to pay for the rooms upon booking. Loki hadn't told her she'd booked a room.

"211." Loki answers dully.

Loki leaves the questioning to Sigyn after that, and the woman doesn't give Loki another glance.

No, none of her men had carried anything out of the inn except empty crates.

Yes, she checked everything over herself.

No, she hadn't seen anybody else carrying barrels.

Sure, she'd keep an eye out for them; they should have told her sooner.

For a moment, Loki thinks she'd let her go without comment, but she calls her over. Sigyn and Fandral exchange looks from where they hovered at the door.

"Did you buy that from Gunlod?" She asks, gesturing at the scarf. "If she sells these out of a box in the middle of summer after you've already got everything you need, then yes." Skaldi's lip twitches in amusement before she firms it out. "You leave her alone, hear me?"

Loki gave her a look. Skaldi rolled her eyes. Loki was getting the impression she did that a lot. "Aye she might seem big and strong and socially stunted—sorry, scary, but I mean it. The woman damn near bolted when she saw me, so don't go harassing her any, got it?"

"…Yes ma'am." She pats Loki's head, which she hadn't done to any of the others, and Loki's not sure how she feels about it. Then, her eyes harden. "And cut your claws before the night's out."

Loki flushes down to her chest and splutters something that might have been an excuse. She scampers away the moment the soldier returns to her papers.

"Don't worry, she's strict with everyone." Sigyn blurts immediately, looking at Loki's ear rather than her eye; which is how she knows it's been rehearsed.

Fandral gives the sky a long-suffering look. "Not everyone's as weird around authority figures as you are Sigyn." He says flatly, and she flushes pink and pushes back inside.

They exchange looks, her confused, him already over it, and then they follow the end of Sigyn's dress as it disappears through the kitchen door.

Loki kind of liked baby Fandral. He wasn't annoying yet.

Well. He was a bit annoying.

"What now?" Sigyn asks, stoicism returned to her. "We try to find a motive." Loki says, and begins searching the kitchen. "Maybe they're selling it?" Fandral suggests, staring curiously as Loki tested the seams of a floorboard before having to abandon it to avoid a server. "Maybe. Depends on when the barrels were stolen?"

He shrugs and begins to poke at tiles the same way without question. 'Big dumb trusting follower.' Loki thinks, a bit nostalgic. "Dawn." Sigyn answers promptly, before adding: "But the streets are too quiet at dawn to move such large amounts of sumac, especially from the inn. Skaldi would have noticed."

Loki migrates toward the ovens. The wall beside one had nails in it, but nothing on them. Removed shelving? Like a pantry. "They're storing it then, and moving it later." Fandral declares; because sometimes he liked to remind people he wasn't a complete idiot. But...

"Where would they store it? If it's outside the inn, Skaldi would have seen it. If its in the inn, they'd have to move it out anyways, and Skaldi would have seen it."

Loki was starting to think Sigyn was more than a little starstruck by the soldier.

Fandral frowns at Sigyn. "You don't need to snap." "I never snap." She says ominously, and Loki doesn't have the time to unpack all that because— 'Found it!'

Beneath the shelving, between broad, Vanir planks, were hinges. Unused storage space, the same size as a child.

Loki turns back to them, then knocks against the wall. "Where's the back of this against?" Sigyn shrugs. "Are you two the only children here?" "…This is an inn." Fandral points out, like he thinks Loki's slow. Loki glares at him. "I meant the ones that are constant—oh." "oh what?"

"When you were talking to Skaldi earlier," Loki says, looking at Sigyn. "she mentioned there being 'three' of you, right? Then she said she was mistaken, but she probably meant she'd seen children around, ones that wanted to return to Asgard."

"Why's that important? Everyone here wants to go home." Sigyn says, but she's frowning. Loki hadn't seen her frown yet. It unnerves her enough not to ask, instead continuing with the explanation.

"It didn't make sense when you explained why the cooks thought Fandral was stealing things. Why would they accuse a child of stealing barrels? Unless," Loki pried the storage space open with her good hand. "They knew there was a way for children to sneak in and out of the kitchen without anyone noticing."

"Why didn't they lock it?" Fandral asks, and Loki slaps his hands away before he could run in.

"Think about it. Why else would they let soldiers and healers bring their children somewhere like this during wartime? This is supposed to be a storage space, but I'd bet they've turned it into some sort of crawl space or escape route. Plus, they've stopped bringing medicine in, but Skaldi is still guarding the door. This is part of the only outpost in Sumac, it's probably all kinds of a target in the war."

They're silent for a moment, before Sigyn tilts her head slowly at her. "You're pretty smart, huh?" Loki grins. "Something like that." Fandral is frowning. "I didn't know Skaldi was so important. Why wouldn't they give a job like that to a man instead?"

At that, Sigyn finally stirs, spinning to face him in a flare of her robes. She's gone pink again.

"Because she's taller and stronger than any other soldier here and three times as honorable." "You don't know that! All she does is sit at a door all day!" "Well, she teaches me things. That's better than waiting to go out and get injured again, nobody else teaches me things." Fandral gives her a disbelieving look. Sigyn's grip tightens on her skirts.

"Like…Frost Giants! She told me that Frost Giants is a slur! See, nobody else would have told me that. What if I'd had to treat Jotuns and I didn't know?"

Fandral stares at her. "You can't treat a Frost Giant, they're our enemies." "The war won't be forever Fandral, and I want to treat all kinds of people or I won't learn anything." "But you can't!" Abruptly, she steps forward and Loki realizes just how damned tall she was compared to Fandral.

"Don't tell me what I can't do." She says, suddenly quiet. Loki steps back. Fandral just gives her a condescending look but doesn't say anything.

Loki hadn't known that about her. Despite being thicker than thieves for a good part of their youth, she'd never…

Loki clutches her injured hand so hard she feels the bones grind, white spots slamming into her vision.

She'd assumed—

"Jotnar." Loki says softly. Sigyn breaks her staring contest with Fandral to look at her. "What?" "Its not Jotuns. Its Jötnar."

The silence hangs heavily between them, and Sigyn gives her a small, righteous nod. Fandral folds his arms. "You shouldn't talk like that here." He says. Sigyn turns to him again but Loki shakes her head. "No, he's right. Maybe after the war, but right now…"

"I know." Sigyn says icily, and Loki bites her cheek. Her expression had never changed, not truly, but then something in it relaxes and it returns to tranquility.

"So, what now?" There's a pause before Loki realizes she was talking to her. "I'll check out the crawl space if you two ask Skaldi about the children. Maybe one of you will recognize them."

Sigyn nods, finding no fault and turning immediately. Fandral doesn't follow. She stops and turns to look at him partially.

"You may be a trusting fool that'll believe any information that's fed to you, but you have more potential and compassion than any of the other idiots I've met. Keep up." Fandral keeps up.

Loki stares after them, breath slammed out of her lungs.

("You may be the prince of Asgard, but you're less arrogant; not by much mind you; than any of the other idiots here. You've got more potential and compassion than them too." "So is that a yes?" "Is that a—yes it's a yes! I'll teach you how to mend bones, but you've got to show me how to cast illusions. You can't use it on anybody though, or I'll get my license revoked.")

At the time, Loki had assumed they'd started drifting apart because of the age gap—Sigyn had been nearly 8 years her senior.

("When I'm king, I'll hunt down the Frost Giants and slay them all!" Loki had believed him, even if he'd known Thor had said it to make him feel better. It had.)

Now, she thinks she may have failed her.

'You have too much faith in people.' Loki thinks hollowly after her.

* * *

The streets smell of fish. Lantern light from the tavern scatters on the cobbles. The Eastbend is a dull roar in the background, and enough crowd walks the street to make the war seem impossibly far.

Sigyn knows the hem of her robes were stained with blood beneath, where you couldn't see. She had pressed it to a man's side in a desperate bid when the bandages hadn't worked. They'd had to cauterize him with the baking tray.

Sigyn sighs softly between her lips, turning to avoid the soldiers that stagger past. Skaldi watches them.

She had pale brown eyes, cold in the way no blue could parallel. Her hair is shorter than even Sigyn's, cut to favor a helmet. She has a sharp widows peak, and a fine-boned, heart-shaped face that rivaled her height. Broad shoulders, and armor that weighed them down. She was very pretty.

Sigyn only realizes she's staring when Skaldi turns her eyes on her, and then she's locking her fingers to avoid bunching up her dress again.

"Back so soon?" Sigyn nods. Someone had relieved the soldier of her papers.

"You mentioned two other children when we were talking earlier." She opens bluntly, and Skaldi blinks at her. "I suppose I did?" "Who were they?" "Well, they don't stop to talk nearly as much, but they're sisters. One's blonde, the others redder than Sumac. Why?"

Sigyn stares at her, stomach sinking slowly. "You don't have names?" She asks quietly. "…I'm afraid not. Why'd you ask?" "I think I know them." "You don't look very pleased about that." Sigyn turns her back to Skaldi. Fandral isn't behind her.

"The green-eyed girl I was with is very smart." She turns around again and Skaldi is watching her, frowning. "I think these girls think they're smarter."

"Think?" Sigyn reaches for Skaldi, hovers instead of making contact. "Skaldi is color blind. She can't see red well." She makes contact and the illusion splinters like glass.

Sigyn lowers her hand. The streets feel very empty all of a sudden. A soldier is walking toward her from the main outpost, looking over the same papers Skaldi had a moment ago. He's frowning. Skaldi's shift was probably over.

"Amateurs." She says quietly. Instead of returning to the inn, she begins to make her way down the street.

They should have worried more about Fandral than her.

Which wasn't to say she wasn't capable, just that…

The man who'd tried to grab her into the alley screams, clutching his hand—the bones protrude as they try to mend what isn't broken, forming new layers and jagged lumps that tear his skin. Sigyn sprints away from him before anyone notices.

…Fandral was capable in a different way.

She comes to a stop, and sighs, long-suffering.

She hoped the green-eyed girl knew how to use those daggers.

Sigyn walks into the tavern.


	3. Chapter 3

The moment Loki shuts the crawl space behind her, the dark takes hold of her in humid clutches. Heat from the ovens thickens the air. Loki gasps, a loud, scraping noise that echoes dully down the passage. She begins to crawl in search of the exit, and the ceiling catches at her back.

Maybe it's because it's dark, enclosed, away from prying eyes, safe; that she lets out half the scream. She hisses, a breathy exhale that catches into a whine.

She cradles her injured hand to her chest. She'd placed her weight on it. She stares sightlessly into the dark, panting between her lips until the bone stops shifting. "Fuck." She wavers.

She shuffles onward, nose filled with the smell of dust, and, oddly, ale.

It's the smell she blames later when recounting the event to Sigyn. "It was just so out of place." She'll say. "How was I supposed to notice?" "Rock trolls notice, Loki." Sigyn will reply. "Rock trolls are notorious for 2 things: noticing, and rolling in their own shit."

What was it that Rock trolls notice?

Something tugs on her seidr, lurching upward like a hook behind her navel. Loki freezes.

Rock trolls noticed ward lines.

Slowly, she feels the ground where she had just placed her elbows. Nothing. The walls? Badly sanded stone, but nothing. Loki touches the ceiling. There's not enough space to write on it.

The ceiling is wood.

It's a stone tunnel.

Loki closes her eyes and thinks that she's only alive by the grace of the Nornir; if she really was this stupid.

She takes a moment to hang her head in shame.

Loki pushes herself up, getting her knees beneath her, and the "ceiling" lifts a good few inches before hitting the real one.

It's a plank of wood, balanced on brackets she couldn't see. Loki uses the space to roll onto her back and begins to slide the plank backward. It immediately falls on top of her.

With a grunt, she lifts it, and balanced on her knees, slides it until it gravity drags it out of the tunnel with a muffled thud.

It's not…the best warding. The lines drawn throughout Asgard's palace were never-ending: beautiful scripture that groaned and moaned for miles with clauses and grammar and vows burnt into glossy oak and waxed marble.

The ward she had crossed felt like it was scratched out with a penknife, just legible enough for the seidr to recognize it as valid. It was also barely a sentence's worth.

Loki was not a witch. Loki didn't do wards. She drags her fingers along its grooves until she's comfortable enough to conclude that the rune for seidr hadn't been used at all; or if it had, was hidden somewhere inside another word; and Loki should just give up and die if that was true.

As such, she decides it probably wouldn't collapse her lungs if she used sorcery, and tests it by shifting back into a boy.

Loki's lungs don't collapse. 'I should be reassured.' He thinks, squinting sightlessly at them. 'But what does it do if not stop me moving, or using seidr?'

Loki shuffles back the way he came, but the ward doesn't release him. With a sigh, he flips back over and continues onward. 'Well I've already crossed it, so if it kills me I kind of deserve it.'

The plank hadn't taken long to fall, so he knew the passage was short.

Which was why he called bullshit.

Loki leans forward into thin air, and with a lurch that threw his heart into his mouth; he fell.

He throws his hands out; notices the plank. He lands one hand on it, twists the other, and due to the unevenness: he slams his jaw into the ground and lands on his ear.

He blinks tears out of his eyes, too stunned to register anything other than the resounding Clack! Of his teeth slamming shut.

He lies there, ground swelling and wavering—the shot to his ear had wiped out his balance.

His calves are still in the passage—The fall was half the size of him.

The realization makes him lie there a little longer.

His jaw begins to throb. His hand hadn't twisted when he landed: It'd buckled due to the injury.

Copper fills the stale air and the plank creaks quietly. The floor is cold but even. Tiles? Soft lantern light, making it harder to see than without.

Loki hisses quietly and drags himself free, elbow tucked into his chest and blood slipping down it.

It drips, echoing down the lonely, arched corridor before him.

The air stirs. Loki drops. The bar sweeps over his head and cracks into the wall with a horrendous CLANG that shoots straight through his ear.

He's already spun around on the ball of his foot—a dress, green. Pale, bruised knees. The bar is coming for him again. Backward? No, the plank was there. Loki dives forward, head tucked into his chest, and takes the girl down.

They slam into the ground and the bar springs free of her grip. Loki scrambles to his haunches, red hair; a forearm hits him in the side of his neck and he's back on the floor and she's on his back; bare feet scratching and rasping against the floor.

Fingers in his hair: once, his head slams into the stone. Tears again, blood shining orange under the light.

Twice, his head slams down. Dizzy. Stronger than the last. Less weight on his back. Her hand is holding her up braced beside his head and—he grabs it, but his fingers won't close; injured hand.

It's still enough to unbalance her and she lands on her side, falling off him. Space. His rolls away. Blood, orange like her hair.

The bar scrapes as she grabs it. Loki kicks at her, boot sinking into her stomach, and she makes a whoomph! noise and curls around it; abandoning the bar. She wrenches his leg, dragging him back toward her and landing him on his back.

Loki gets his other leg under him, bends the knee.

Loki pushes from the heel, hurling himself toward her and up, slams into the side of the wall. The lantern bounces beside his shoulder. Loki grabs it.

She's beneath him, pinned to the wall by the leg she had grabbed. Loki brings the lantern down.

Shink! She's drawn the dagger in his boot, and it's found its new rest in the side of his thigh. The lantern hits with a crunch and he falls away from her, backing down the corridor.

His head spins. Loki folds and spews bile and spit; hot and burning. She groans, and rolls slowly onto her back, hands on her head. She's small.

Loki retches, gags, bleeds tears from his eyes, bone from his hand, and loses time in the ache spreading down his nose.

"Good wards, huh?" She asks, and Loki's eyes widen and her knee slams into his stomach. He crumples over it. She brings her elbow down on the base of his skull. Loki doesn't blackout. Loki doesn't blackout because the world is green and she's shoving him away, seidr crackling violently between them.

Loki's hands are shaking. No, no shaking—falling apart. The skin glitches, rising into ridges and sinking into pink flesh, blue streaking past as the shapeshifting struggles to keep raveled.

The white in his vision heals; numbs the throb spreading down his nose.

The shapeshifting crawls back together, seidr at the seams like worn threads. The ridges are still there. They look wrong on Aesir pink.

'Fuck' Loki thinks, tries to raise his head because he didn't have time for this enemy taller than him green dress bruised knees hair like blood—

Loki looks up.

Her seidr is pink. It isn't rose petals, soft dew and plush lips, a whisper in a garden and a hum like birdsong.

It bubbles. Pop pop pop in his ears, the sound of an unwatched stove boiling over. Heat, building in a thin miasma around her hands, harsh and neon and blinding in its audacity. She's grinning (a grimace she's too young for this spell what are you doing—), and the light of it makes her teeth look bloody.

Theatrical. Excessive. Too much. A pink that licked like candle wicks and nothing more.

Loki was hurt and drained. No seidr master would waste a spell on someone in his state.

(too young she's a child—a real child, younger than Sigyn. Who taught her this? It's dangerous what if she gets hurt—)

Loki spits at her. Its all blood. Did he bite his tongue?

She casts.

He sees the skin on her palms go up like flash paper. The spell hits.

Lorelei wipes the blood off her lip with the back of her hand, teeth marks bleeding more down her chin. There's a buzz in the back of her head.

Her chest feels cold and barren. She can't contain her grin at that, wide and fingers flexing like she could hold onto the euphoria it brings her. (My hands hurt.) She'd done it. She'd used all her seidr.

It'd become easier to run out of lately. She was getting better.

She presses her lips together (It burns—) to contain the smile, forcing an aloof mask as she stares down the corridor at the crumpled figure.

(My legs are shaking.)

She sneers.

Green eyes and seidr—didn't he know his cloak clashed with them?

* * *

Midgard was contested ground.

This made it neutral, falling under the dominion of none. Perhaps that was why Odin requested her here.

Her gaze is glacial as it overlooks the ruined lands, bodies rotting beneath its single sun. The ground is softer than Jotunheim's, and her bare feet sink into it.

Most of Jotunheim's sorcerers fell here if not all. The glaciers that tower from the oceans and lands attest to that. Midgard would never have achieved such glory otherwise. Her lip curls.

The Bifrost opens, cracking into the ground with a muffled boom that races across the lands. Odin steps out. His einherjar flank him.

He could have chosen to appear further from her; attempt to avoid looking up at her. He seems to realize the futility of it however and cranes his neck to meet her eyes.

The sun appears to be blinding him. She makes no attempt to move and relieve him of the discomfort.

His einherjar shift restlessly when they realize she stands alone, arms folded.

Odin opens his mouth to speak.

"The war is over." She says, and her voice rolls across the pathetic excuse of a Midgardian northern pole. He watches her, expression hard. The curl of her lip turns to a snarl, and spears bristle at her. From behind shields. Cowards.

"I killed your husband." He says, pressing. "No, you did not." "He still lives?" "No." "Then by what hand has he fallen, for you to speak with such surety?" "You speak to the Queen of Jotunheim, not it's consort. Would you continue to challenge her word?"

Odin's smile is grim.

The winds here are gentle, not as cataclysmic as those of an ice planet. Still, they move the clouds, and the sun opens it's eye, glaring down in contempt at their intrusion.

It catches on her, glinting off the gold crowning the base of her horns, long and broad and pointed to the skies. Her shadow eclipses the Aesir.

"Jotunheim will forsake it's right to the other realms, in the form of the Casket. It shall be the truth in the statement of the war's end."

Laufey would have agreed, bitter and biding and certain that he'd once more reclaim their relic. Were he alive, Farbauti would have stood behind him, as was her oath.

"No." She says. Odin's eye glints. "No?" "The war is over." She repeats. "Destroy the Casket on Jotunheim." Odin is quiet, cunning in the shadows that hide him.

"You wish it taken from us so we may not use it. You reserve no right to its use. It shall be destroyed on Jotunheim, and it's power released to the lands, as was its origin."

"Jotunheim's treachery is fresh." She sweeps her arms outward, mocking. "Then, shall I raise my dead to betray the realms once more? Strike down your men with the corpses beneath them?" She flicks her wrist, and the corpse of a nearby Jotun is flung into the air by a blunt cleft of ice.

It lands heavily and rolls to a stop at the feet of the Einherjar who flinch—one of them hurls his spear. She plucks it out of the air, derisive.

Odin, unmoved, simply looks at her.

"That is not why you wish it destroyed." "If you find falsehood in my words, it is because you know of another truth. If this is true, withholding the Casket is of your hostility toward my realm."

Without the Casket's powers, Jotunheim would begin to break apart. Its formation had been an act of hubris, a smear in the lines of their history.

The power had been drawn from the realm itself, bottled—as long as it had remained on Jotunheim, the sin of it would have been bearable.

The removal of it completely was a sin that would shake the heavens. Better it be returned than harnessed.

Odin is quiet for a long time, and disgust makes her teeth clench. The power-hungry fool.

"You truly wish it destroyed?" "In Utgard—let them see me destroy it, lest they think it your decision." "They will think I forced your hand regardless." "Which is why you will destroy it tomorrow, still weakened from your assault on Laufey."

The einherjar bristle once more, and their shields rise. "It sounds like you seek my assassination." "Then I would have worded it beneath honeyed words." She doesn't kneel, instead lowering herself at the waist so she may outstretch her arm to him.

"Should they attack you, you will find sanctum within the palace, and my strength at your defense until you may be recalled to Asgard. This, I swear."

For the first time, a flicker of surprise crosses his face. They both know the bargain must be made here. His courts would never allow it if they were consulted, nor would hers.

Odin wants this war ended as much as she does.

The touch of a Jotun could blacken and kill an Aesir's flesh within seconds.

He can't clasp her forearm to seal the bargain; it is nearly the height of him. He clasps her wrist instead, unable to close fully around it—she touches her finger to his elbow. Regardless, the deal seals in a pulse of seidr that shudders the ground beneath their feet.

Ymir, though he be an old fool his strength still humbled. He doesn't release her.

"And if your intent is to reclaim the casket while we are under assault?" "Then I suggest you let me destroy it quickly, without the bells and whistles you Aesir seem so proud of."

He lets go of her, but his eyes flick to the gold at her horns and the anklets that decorate her in place of boots.

She sniffs. Those are different.


	4. Chapter 4

_Odin travels to Jotunheim to destroy the Casket. Farbauti needs a drink. Freyr trips over Jotunheim's culture. Tyr wants to go home. Helblindi simultaneously manages to be both the only functioning member of the royal family, and a walking disaster._

_The ancestors are displeased, and there is plots and treachery afoot._

...

It is cold. The winds whip around her head, trying to topple the giant by heaving at her broad shoulders. She'd done her braids differently. Suited for greeting visiting royalty. It meant half her hair was down, billowing around her face until she was tempted to sheathe her arm in ice and chop it off at the nape.

(She was hoping the hairstyle would convince her people this _was _a visit she had agreed to and not an Asgardian intrusion.)

Farbauti sighs through clenched teeth and holds her hair in place around her neck. For a single, blissful moment, her vision is unobscured.

A lock breaks free in a particularly strong gust that numbs her ears and moves the heavy pelts at her shoulders. It tickles her nose.

_'Noise carries on ice.' _She tells herself and clenches her jaw around the scream building in her throat. Her teeth grind.

Farbauti carefully arranges the crown of braids to protect the tips of her ears and tucks the rest of her hair into the furred mantle of her cloak. The motions are tight with barely contained aggression.

She had never considered the great lands as _whiny, _but as the winds make use of Ymir's voice to hurl a flurry of wet snow into her hair with a heavy _whump! _And a wail that warbled across the ice, she found herself considering blasphemy.

Hiding her hands beneath her cloak lest Asgard's gatekeeper judge her, she clasps them in prayer, bows her head, and begins to speak.

"They are only stepping upon the plains for but a moment, have they not done so in the past?" The wind wails at her louder. "They have indeed spilled our blood, but we have spilled theirs of equal measure. Their transgression is to return to the lands a power that was taken from it a long time ago: the power contained in the Casket." The winds quiet, and she raises her head hopefully.

This time, the snow hits her right in the ear.

She unclasps her hands and refrains from calling her ancestors a bitch.

_'I could crouch.' _She thinks as another gale plows into her back. _'The winds do not swoop that low.' _As though sensing her impending reprieve, the Bifrost shatters the sky and slams into the ground with thunder that raced over the ice plateau.

Farbauti is understandably blinded.

She stares blankly over the ice, refusing the urge to blink and admit defeat to the white spots that had seized her vision.

She aims her eyes at the ground after a moment and hopes it's close enough to Odin's vicinity. She parts her lips to speak, thousands of rehearsed greetings and addresses coming to mind with bored practice.

"Greetings, Queen Farbauti!" Farbauti still can't see but that was _not Odin. "_You look as beautiful as always, a feat knowing how many lives beauty can cost during wartime!"

She takes a moment to process the insult, reeling, before her lip curls back from her teeth and her voice snaps in the air like a whip.

"It cost no lives but that of my child's. I gave birth but a cycle ago, and fought alongside my men till then. spare me your political sniping."

All at once, she feels something drain out of her, leaving her chest hollow.

They are silent, so Jotunheim fills her ears with its song: the cavernous howls, usually so haunting, sound heartbreakingly lonely.

_'Why did I tell them that.' _She thinks dully. She can hear them wondering the same.

It is cold. Pressure builds behind her throbbing eyes, and the crown sitting at the base of her horn drags down her head, exhaustion working with it until she was tempted to stand till the snows buried her.

"Who is it that accompanies you, Odin?" She sighs.

"Freyr, King of Vanaheim and Tyr, my war counselor. We thought it best the party be kept small. I am…sorry. To hear of your loss." The tension had fallen away with her declaration, replaced by an immense awkwardness that she found preferable to their bitterness.

"Come." She says and turns from them. His pity was worthless. It was _him _Laufey had left her child for. "It is a while's walk to Utgard." "Can we not destroy the Casket here?" A gravelly voice asks—it must be Tyr.

"Jotunheim is leaving its winter months. As it exits deep freeze, the oceans beneath the ice warm and begin to flow faster. The ice plains are in the middle of shifting. The ground is not stable enough for a sudden release of energy. Utgard has foundations in rock, while the surrounding plains float—we stand upon an iceberg currently, but it is large enough we consider it a plateau. Upsetting it would be disastrous."

"Also, you want your people to see it done." The voice that had insulted her—Freyr—says, though the sourness had left his voice. "Yes."

They begin their trek. Her vision still recovering, she uses her staff and direction to guide the way.

* * *

They are at the edge of the plateau when Utgard appears. There is a river tracing the foot of the plateau at first glance—upon a second, it becomes clear that the river was, in fact, a glimpse of the vast ocean upon which the plateau floated. This was where the ice plains came to an end though, and across the fathomless depths was where Utgard began.

The walls are steep, tall yet clefted as though outcroppings of rock had been knocked off at some point. It gave the impression of a cliff that had been polished into being a wall. Even from their vantage point above it, Odin couldn't see where the wall ended, or into the city. There was, however, the impression of a mountain rising away and out of it in the distant fog. It gave some insight into the shape of the walls: a mishappen semi-circle, following the rise and falls of the land, backed against a mountain just as tall and sloped as the rest of it.

The ice shudders beneath him—he realizes the giantess had brought her foot down and he feels the rush of seidr that parts an innocuous section of the glacier. It is a wide, circular pit that could fit Farbauti twice abreast. She steps neatly into it with practiced elegance and disappears. There is silence between them.

"Do we…follow?" Freyr asks, staring awkwardly into the darkness. Odin brushes against his war counselor, an attempt to put Tyr at ease from where he stares tensely into the hole. "Do you want to walk down?" Odin asks him drily, gesturing vaguely at the vertical drop off of the plateau. "My King," Tyr says warningly. Odin turns around, looks at him, and steps backwards into the hole.

He did not take deals made lightly, and Farbauti had extended her protection to him; if not his company. "Her protection does not exempt you from foolishness!" He hears Tyr cry into the hole as though reading his mind, and Odin hits a curve in the darkness, the ice biting deep into his bones, and he realizes he was on a _slide._

The winds tear at his robes and his hair, blinding him and digging deep, rending claws into his flesh—it bellows into his ears and rips tears from his eyes. Then he's airborne. It doesn't last, as with a sharp, quick movement that reminded Odin of striking snakes, Farbauti plucks him out of the air, her palm against his chest and her thumb light against his back. He stares down into the nearly black depths of the ocean beneath him. The river was much wider from below. Farbauti sets him down on the thin stretch of ice that passed at its banks.

"Good catch." He says peaceably, noting the sharpness of her claws as she is careful to detangle them from where they'd snagged on his cloak. He also notes that she'd been biting them. She grunts at him. A moment later Freyr shoots out of the exit; the landing surely much slower and softer for beings of the appropriate size. Odin watches with a shrewd eye as she catches him as well, though less gently and dropping him as though he were something vile.

So, he could trust her to take care of his company even if she'd not extended her protection to them. That, or she was just waiting for a less obvious way to off them. She doesn't have to catch Tyr, as with a screech that warbles through the ice, he slows to a stop, hanging from his sword that he'd stabbed into the ice.

She waits for him to free it before turning to the river. She pauses. "You will have to jump it." She says, in the voice of someone that had just realized her guests could not jump it. "You have accessibility problems," Freyr tells her in a wise voice, unwisely.

Her glare is no less effective rendered from an angle where they were looking up her nose. The four of them look across the river in silence. Odin privately notes that Farbauti probably could not jump it either. There must be some shallowness for her to land on within the waters.

"We can't swim," Freyr says. "We'd freeze if we took off our armors to swim, and we'd drown if we didn't." "I know that." Farbauti snaps waspishly in the tone of someone that had been about to ask them to do just that. "Why can't you form an ice bridge?" Tyr asks. "The currents are stronger than they look. We have tried in the past. Even temporarily it does not last—beneath our weight, it shatters. For you, it is too far too run before the waters collapse it."

"Can you not carry us?" Odin asks blandly. They all stare at him. "I'm not carrying you across the river." "She's not carrying me across the river." Tyr agrees. "I can hide us with an illusion so it looks like she's not carrying us across the river." Freyr points out.

"Why is he here again?" Farbauti asks, and Tyr scowls even though she couldn't see it. Odin looks for handholds on her frame. "So he can spare us all the indignity of having to be carried across the river." Tyr snaps, at the same time as Freyr says: "Your peace is to be made with me as well, my armies did not fight in Odin's name but mine." Farbauti nods. They aren't sure whether she's acknowledging Tyr or Freyr.

"We can hold onto your earrings." Odin offers mildly. Farbauti makes a deep, rumbling growl from somewhere deep in her chest. It does not stop them ending up on her shoulders, hands wrapped around the golden loops like handlebars and mouths filled with the thick furs decorating her. Odin and Tyr end up clinging to one side, Freyr on the other as his seidr descended around them like a haze on a warm summer's day. The cold ripples off her in waves and they're nearly dislodged when she rolls her shoulders, the muscles in her neck rippling as she takes a few steps back; readying herself.

Odin hears Tyr begin to murmur a prayer. There's no way Farbauti doesn't hear it as well because she waits until he's at the most important part before leaping. As he'd predicted, she doesn't clear it in one leap—she lands, and she shakes with the force, dropping quickly as her knees bend. They experience a moment of weightlessness for it.

This close to her Odin feels the shiver that goes through her at contact with the water. Goosebumps rise on her flesh as the water crashes against her calves. It nearly upsets her, but she takes as long a step as she could. She can't quite make it to the bank but finds purchase on the steep slope of it. It's enough to bring her other foot onto solid rock, even as she loses her previous grip and the leg slides deeper into the water.

She quickly removes them from her person, setting them down under the guise of wiping the water off her legs before it could freeze. "Walk." She commands them sourly, leading them around the length of the wall. Her furs aren't soaked. They must be waterproofed.

It's almost 20 minutes past when the gates come into view. The banks, which had been clinging sheerly to the walls, river water spraying across their feet with every step, widens the closer they get.

It's enough that when the guards finally spot them it appears as though they had been approaching the gates headlong rather than shuffling awkwardly along it.

There is an arch built of cobbled rock framing the deep passage within which the gates are mounted. It is large enough that the peak of it isn't within view. As they step beneath the arch, it becomes clear that the purpose of it was to avoid snow obscuring the guard's vision as their bloody eyes fixate upon them.

Then Farbauti steps beneath the arch. He sees them look at her before their eyes are drawn to the stark gold bands adorning her horns—they immediately bow; one fist to their chests. One of them drops his spear. They all politely ignore it, though Odin feels rather than sees Tyr's confusion.

"That doesn't seem like a very guard like thing to do." Well. Odin and Tyr politely ignore it. Farbauti sighs and the guards must take it as a cue to straighten. The one who'd dropped his weapon kicks it back into his hand. "Do all your soldiers drop their weapons or is it just feathers over here?" Freyr continues when he's met with stony silence. Odin is surprised to note that the guard in question _was_ wearing a feathered pelt rather than the usual furred ones.

"Do not comment on a Jotunn's furs." Farbauti says as the guard's face struggles to remain neutral, his lip curling from his teeth. _'Not in aggression,' _Odin thinks, even as Tyr takes it as such and stiffens. _'but in horror.'_

His partner presses his lips together and looks like he's trying to decide between a grimace or a laugh.

"Well those aren't furs, now are they?" Freyr says flatly, and the guard chooses laughter, exhaling shakily in an attempt to avoid it.

"Keep commenting on his pelts," Farbauti says mildly, "and we're all going to assume you're trying to court him." Tyr chokes then coughs, and the only sound for a long while is him trying to beat the muffled coughs out of his chest and the sound of the wind whistling. "That—" Freyr finally says. "—_How _do you even _get _'please take me I'm yours' out of _that?_"

Feathers closes his eyes. His friend's lips are pressed so tightly together it looks like he's having a conniption. "Open the gates," Farbauti snaps, ignoring Freyr. "Unless you want to figure out a way to let the King of Vanaheim down gently."

The gates are opened, Feathers barely managing to keep the panicked desperation out of the way he slams his fist twice against the doors and announces the Queen. He does not announce the guests. Odin feels Tyr becoming more irritable by the second, though he'd ceased coughing.

The doors do not immediately spit them out into the city, reinforcing the idea that the walls were a repurposed cliff. They end up having to walk through chiseled stone corridors. Odin stares when he realizes what the light sources were. Potted plants hang from distant ceilings, leaves, and ferns and strangely bloomed flowers casting a bioluminescent glow over the walls. They glow with a pale teal light, like sunlight through ice.

Some form of bugs flit around them, spiraling in lazy, glowing circles through the air. Jötnar silence when they see them, red eyes glinting down at them—the darkness was still prevalent, but they appeared to see through it well enough. Starlight fell through the odd arrow slit. The darkness had the added benefit of not letting them see more than what was before them as Tyr and Odin's eyes flit shrewdly for any weakness in the walls.

Freyr was occupied with other things. "You do wish for peace talks to commence, yes?" he was saying. "In that case, I feel like the whole 'I just propositioned a man in front of his queen' thing should be explained for the greater good."

"You are remarkably loud for something I could step on." Farbauti finally snarls, after Freyr had gone through 5 different versions of the same question. By then, they had gathered a substantial amount of curiosity from otherwise belligerent Jötnar.

Farbauti begins to descend a stairwell. For every step, they have to jump.

"Compliments are a large part of Vanir courts." Freyr says, choosing to ignore the threat upon his life. "If everything goes well, you will eventually have to make an appearance in all our realms. If you think about it, this will be saving you a lot of misunderstandings in the future." Odin is pretty sure it's more Freyr's curiosity than anything at this point.

Farbauti growls and stops walking. "You will shut up after I answer?" She asks dangerously, and Freyr mimes zipping his mouth shut. It is a blatant lie and they all know it. She begins walking again. "Pelts are either made yourself or gifted to you by someone who has begun to court you. If someone comments on your pelt, it usually preludes an offer to hunt you a different one, from a stronger beast."

Freyr scowls. "I had no intention of bringing him a pelt."

"Do not comment on pelts unless you wish to ask what beast it is from." She says, talking over him. "Do not compliment a pelt: if the person has hunted it themselves, you are flirting. If they haven't, it is safe, but there is no way of telling."

"What about insulting pelts?" "Don't." "What if they aren't wearing a pelt?" "Then they're probably cold." She snaps and steps off the spiral staircase with more force than necessary. Cowed, the party of Jötnar that had been lingering near the steps scatters, sliding back toward the walls. It was why the one that hadn't moved stood out.

His furs were a soft black speckled grey that set off the darkness of his skin. His ears were pierced several times over, more gold than Odin had seen on any Jötnar other than Farbauti herself. There was a thin golden band around one of his horns and a thicker, inscribed one around the other. He was armored. His hair was black but feathery, softening otherwise regal features.

"Uh." He says eloquently and looks up at her in surprise. Farbauti pauses. He blinks before hastily ducking his head in a bow, which is when he catches sight of her guests.

The men behind him bow at the waist. _'A prince or a noble?' _Odin thinks. The Jotunn tips his head to them belatedly—reluctantly, the men behind him follow his lead and bow to Odin and his company, though significantly less deeply than they had Farbauti. Farbauti keeps walking, and the Jotunn falls into step beside her. _'A prince.'_

"My Queen—" He begins and Farbauti flicks her eyes at him. "Spit it out." She says. At the end of the corridor is a sharp turn and a surprising amount of light spills from beyond it. He'd barely parted his lips to speak before she rounds the corner and Odin sees panic flit across his face. He jerks toward her, fingers skimming her arm, but misses—immediately, he stops walking, draws his hand to his chest, and grimaces like a man on death row.

Odin follows her around the bend. The corridor ends and they stand beneath the open sky. He hears the prince sigh dispassionately behind him, and in a voice that could dry oceans, he says: "My Queen. Thjazi; son of Olvadi, brother of Loi and Gangr, father of Skaldi; awaits your counsel."

"Well," Thjazi says, and had he been standing before anyone but Farbauti, he would have looked as tall as mountains and more powerful still. "I'd like to think I'm a little bit more than that."

* * *

Farbauti feels her eye spasm. She recalls her ancestor's fury as she had awaited the Bifrost. It was foolish of her to think they wouldn't continue to heckle her.

Thjazi had chosen to stand as far as he possibly could from the bend—this managed to lend him the illusion of being able to look her in the eye. It also meant that his heels were at the edge of the staircase that was carved into the back of the walls. There were many others like it, winding around each other and sometimes coming to dead ends as they fought to descend into the city.

It was clear from here why the city wasn't visible from the plateau. This area was in a shallow basin; though the stronghold covered an area as large as a country and the district couldn't speak for all of it. There was the distant sound of a waterfall.

She hears Freyr gasp softly as he looked over it.

"Thjazi." She says, hoping he would tell her why he was here. He had two guards with him, forced to stand on lower steps and therefore ultimately useless if Farbauti chose to fling him off the wall. He pauses in the middle of spouting his various titles, all of which Helblindi had known but not named. He mistakes her interruption and smiles. "Of course, how could I forget." He bows. A muscle jumps in her jaw. He turns to Odin and his company and his smile gains teeth.

"All-father." He says; assessing. "You are rather quiet—have you nothing to say as you look upon the city you could not breach?"

Odin looks up at him, expression bored. "It is nothing I have not seen before." He says instead of _'I defeated your King like, a day ago.'_ Farbauti takes his statement for what it is and continues it for him: "He has been here before, in calmer times. And he will be here again when the times calm."

"Poetic." Thjazi says flatly and for the first time since he'd blocked them off, he looks at her. Then, he starts. Thjazi wore his masks like he wore his armors— close to the skin, and you'd rarely see him without it. Which is what she blames her unease on when his mask slips and he stares at her in open-mouthed surprise; then confusion.

"Your hair is open." He states, almost dumbly. Like she had told him she was going to jump into the ocean and he'd just now realized she'd taken off her pelts for it. "Are you going to tell me my eyes are red next?" She says for lack of anything else. He doesn't stop staring at her.

"Just tell her she's pretty and go." Tyr snaps, severely misreading the situation, and Farbauti wonders how he'd managed to defeat her armies. "That's my _mom." _She hears Helblindi whisper from somewhere behind them. No-one else catches it. She fights back a snort at the horror in his voice.

"You're pretty." Thjazi tells her, voice dripping with scorn and staring at Tyr; eyes half-lidded. "You aren't." She says back. Freyr makes a horrified noise. "Is that Laufey's pelt?" He asks her next. She wishes he'd get to the point. "It would be in poor taste to wear his gift after I killed him." "…So, is it?" "Yes. I'm considering donating it to the goodwill."

There's a silence as he tries to work out if she's joking.

"Well will you look at that!" Helblindi chirps suddenly. Thjazi flicks his eyes toward him. "You guys have been blocking a main stairwell for 5 minutes now. As Captain of the royal guard, I'm going to have to ask you all to move! Completely unrelated," He continues, when Thjazi smiles amiably and steps aside, "It is, in fact, considered murder if I see anybody fall off the wall because someone coated the steps in ice. Creative, but still murder."

His smile doesn't change. The ice on the steps breaks by itself and one of his guards tries to sweep it clear with his feet. "Ah, that reminds me," Thjazi says when Farbauti had already begun to climb down the steps. She stops and sighs. "I wished to congratulate you on your ascension to Queen. You have the unfailing support of our clan in all endeavors, of course." "Of course." She repeats and keeps walking.

Thjazi knew better than to approach her with small talk. Coupled with the slip of his mask, she feels the unease that'd settled in her mind bloom. He'd been looking for some kind of response in the conversation, and when she'd not reacted as expected, he'd lost his footing and let them leave.

"Royal Guard?" Tyr inquires when he realizes the descent to the city would not be a quick one. When Farbauti doesn't answer, Helblindi realizes he was the one being addressed. "I oversaw war operations until recently. I returned to duty when the war ended. The royal guard is the same as a city watch. We police Utgard and surrounding colonies."

"How do you feel about the peace talks?" Tyr asks, something heavier and darker in his voice. He had been there when Jotunheim was still friendly with Asgard and wasn't as prejudiced as those after him. He was also responsible for all the propaganda that had _spawned _the prejudice. "Both sides have agreed on a way to end the war. It is a good start." "You want it then?" Tyr presses and Farbauti hears the rustle of furs as he shrugs. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Good men died in that war. And you still haven't gotten what you wanted in the first place: Midgard. I thought you'd be more bitter." "We _needed _Midgard because our lands were weakening. Physically. The return of the casket to the lands will stabilize us enough to begin rebuilding."

"Why did you not free it while the casket was in your possession?" "Until we lost it, it was a great asset to taming and developing the lands. It is still not certain whether we will be able to continue development without it, and with nearly all our seidr masters gone. Still, if we free it now, we will no longer have to expand to other realms. It is a start. It will take time for our people to understand this, so I fear hostilities are still high. I would ask you to remain close to the Queen until the visitation is over."

"You speak better than your Queen." Freyr says drily, and when they take a turn on the steps and they catch a glimpse of the sky beyond the walls, he says: "Oh. Oh wow."

Many called Jotunheim the realm of eternal night. It was true to some extent. Night cradled the realm for months on end, but they had a sun that overlooked them for a third of the same time.

It was distant still as it simmered on the horizon, unlike the blazing fury of Vanaheim's three stars. The light it cast was reminiscent of this, a bone-white that purpled the skies and painted the great lands in molten silver.

It pierced through what ice it reached, creating slick, glowing blue surfaces, but did little else save warm the waters and raise the beasts from winter.

There would be festivities once her guests were off-world.

"Winter is coming to a close." Helblindi remarks when he sees what had caught Freyr's eye. They say little after that. It's a while until they reach the ground, and by then they'd garnered a crowd that rippled and pushed and looked down at her guests with baleful eyes and hateful whispers.

Helblindi had somehow managed to get in front of them and he parts the crowd easily at the sight of him. Easier still when they bow first to him then to Farbauti and are silent in doing so lest they catch her ire. They keep walking and no-one stops them.

There is a tension palpable in the air as she waits for something to give, for someone to defy her and for the crowd to turn lethal in a riot. It doesn't. The guard is a thick presence, armored to the nines—they aren't quite bracing against the crowd, but the match of their armor to the prince's is enough to force a blanket of control over the people.

The spectacle loses its appeal when none of them speak or acknowledge the crowd, though she can see in Freyr's face that he thinks this strange. Soon, the city fills once more with the sounds of its bustle; if not more subdued and watchful than before.

The unease builds steadily like nausea in her stomach. It was unnatural for no-one to oppose them; not even to spit at the feet of the All-father. Instead, they watched like they anticipated a meal.

At the center of the city was Vatn, a deep basin in the rock that had over time filled with snowmelts and plants until fish had taken to it as well. Ice bridges arched over the lake in confusing highways and paths, plants winding around the banisters in luminous silvers. Overlooking it was the palace.

The entrance was level with the city, but it gradually built higher until it perched watchfully over it. The architecture was almost gothic, dark, carved stone and vaulting ice that had been shaped by the Casket long ago. It was built to catch what little sunlight they got, and it gleamed for it.

There was more of it in the caverns _below _Utgard, a vast cave system filled with more of the city than what was on the surface. She had no intention of letting her guests know this.

"My Queen, we need to talk." Helblindi murmurs, falling into step beside her. She flicks her eyes at him. "Can it wait?" "No." He says immediately. She chances a look at her guests. Tyr is staring at a group of children that had waded up to their thighs in the lake, attempting to form ice and instead creating a slush that slopped out of their hands. He looks discomfited.

"It's important." Helblindi insists. "No, _that _is important." Farbauti says and nods toward where Thjazi was once again approaching her, this time with a crowd of curious-looking nobles. Helblindi's face does something complicated. "Distract them," Farbauti says and picks up the pace. Helblindi makes a frustrated noise but splits off to deal with them.

"Now that's loyalty." Freyr says, almost sympathetic, as he sees Helblindi immediately get rushed by four women, two of whom look murderous rather than attracted. "Move faster." Farbauti agrees.

They move faster. They manage to enter the palace without slowing, though Farbauti relives two guards of their post with a simple: "Your Captain was looking for you." Before she leads her guests deeper inside.

A few minutes later finds them near one of the windows that overlooked the lake below. Partially because Farbauti wanted to make sure her son hadn't accidentally gotten hitched again, but mostly because Odin was starting to annoy her and she needed something to focus on that wasn't how small and easy to squish he was being. Helblindi had managed to get rid of the nobles.

"I feel like this would all be a lot easier if you were more transparent with your courts." Freyr says during a lull in the conversation. "No." "Well okay then."

Helblindi catches her eye and immediately makes an undignified flailing gesture at her. Farbauti inclines her eyebrows subtly. She hopes he stops before someone other than his soldiers saw him.

He shakes his head and makes another attempt at communicating. It is as unsuccessful as the last but includes twice the amount of throat-slitting gestures and panicked hand waving. He even employs the help of one of his soldiers by picking the man up and miming throwing him in the lake.

She decides to give him the benefit of the doubt: that he was _not _going to attempt regicide.

Odin quickly commandeers her attention once more. This is rewarded by the faint sound of Helblindi slapping himself in the face.

_'My son is an idiot.'_ She thinks, almost fond. "You must understand," Odin is saying. "We must observe certain formalities if we are to convince our courts that this entire affair was conducted above board, and if we went behind their backs it was because of the time frame and not because—" "—You thought their counsel worthless?" She completes, and he gives her a flat look.

"Certain formalities will have to be skipped." She says. "The palace is not equipped for hospitalities. Most beasts are still hibernating, so the only meats we can offer you is fish." "We have eaten fish before." Tyr says drily.

"It is raw."

She lets that sit between all of them for a moment. "…I'm guessing you don't have vegetables because of the winter?" Freyr sighs, and she frowns at him. "Of course, we have vegetables. Our men cannot sustain war efforts on fish alone."

"Of course. It was foolish of me to think you wouldn't have vegetables during a deep freeze. Forgive me." "Are they edible?" Tyr asks before she can respond to Freyr, and she scowls at him. "Yes." She says.

"No." one of the servants says at the same time. She flushes a deep, vibrant blue when Farbauti looks at her, but soldiers on regardless. "My queen is not wrong, it is not poisonous, but…well. They need to be crushed between one's teeth to get past the protective shells, and—" "—Your molars are the size of our heads." Freyr completes, defeated, and the handmaiden bows lower than she should in apology.

Farbauti rolls her eyes to the ceiling. "Do we have _anything _we can serve them?" She snaps, and the handmaiden peeks up at her through thick lashes.

A moment later they find themselves in the feast halls. It is deserted, and Farbauti slows at the threshold. The halls were never empty. Even in wartime.

She had often stridden past, staff in hand and war tables scored into the backs of her eyelids; to see jötnar sitting sparsely within.

It was a favorite to the royal guard especially, somewhere to share drinks and stories between shifts. (or to sleep, if you wanted to wake up with your feet iced to the floors.)

During the winters, however, it was filled nearly to bursting as people sought shelter from the storms. It was considered rude not to offer a visitor a strong drink during the cold months, and even those with sturdy houses would come to take advantage of the palace's hospitalities. This was compounded by the halls being open to the public at all hours.

(Though none would dare linger in the corridors just outside, lest they run into a member of the royal family while drunk. The "Incident", which had involved three marriage proposals, Helblindi, and Farbauti's rightful panic, was still engraved in the public subconscious.)

The feast halls were never empty.

Except now it was.

She tried not to take it personally; to feel her people's scorn in the way their steps were spat back at them by the vaulting ceilings: echoes that did little to split the silence.

'_The war has taken its toll on the people. They are occupied with rebuilding the parts of our towns and cities that were ruined before the war was taken to Midgard.' _She consoles herself, before sighing deeply. She sees Odin cast her a long, considering look from beside her. She picks up the pace.

_'It is winter. The halls are a refuge from all storms. The halls should not be empty.' _

The hollowness settles somewhere deep in her belly. Someone had cleared away all the furs, low set tables, and pillows that had seated people on the floors: both a way to increase the hall's capacity, and to stop the monstrosities they would form out of ice in an attempt to seat themselves.

Without it the halls felt barren and unused. Two tables run the length of the room like spines. They were carved out of ice so clear it looked glass, with the smooth lines and decorations of something handmade instead of formed: They were the original tables, from when the halls were for the royal family instead of the public.

The chairs that surround it are evenly spaced instead of scattered as Jötnar attempted to be taller than their fellows. They are stone hewn and slender, made to look elegant despite the rich, jagged darkness of the material.

At risk of destroying something generations old, Farbauti lowers the height of the table in a pulse of seidr.

Tyr climbs into one of the chairs in 2 quick bounds and the others follow his lead.

"Surely you've had to accommodate guests of our sizes before?" Freyr frowns, watching as she takes her seat and the table is at her knees.

"We have not had to do so in a while. The wing for it was repurposed. It will be fixed as peace talks commence and Utgard is opened once more."

The same servant enters the hall and sets down a pitcher.

It made sense that they were stocked with drink, but it takes considerable effort for Farbauti not to put the fear of Ymir in the girl. Intentional or not, the reminder that her people wanted no part in the palace's hospitalities this winter burns sourly in the back of her throat.

Then she looks at her guests and realizes the pitcher was the height of them.

Farbauti never thought she'd see the day she wished she had stocked Utgard with miniatures. Either out of respect, pity, or offense, no-one comments on the joke they were making of the entire process.

Farbauti sighs and shapes a goblet in her hand with practiced ease. There's a moment as she and the servant look at each other in realization before the woman quickly turns to the men and makes them their cups. She has to form them on her fingertips instead of her palms.

"Thank you." Tyr says, accepting his, and looking like he wanted to go home. "We aren't usually like this." The servant murmurs and Farbauti doesn't have it in her to get annoyed at excuse.

"Nay, had we expected full hospitalities, we would not have visited Jotunheim both in wake of its war and its winter." Odin dismisses and the servant tips her head.

The wine is poured into her goblet first, and from hers, she fills Odin's, then Freyr's, and finally Tyr's. If any are surprised by the Jotnar's way of pouring, they don't show it.

What they _do _show surprise at, is when the ice in the walls part, breaking an elaborate design depicting the ancestral roots of the royal family. Helblindi stumbles through as though shoved. He straightens when he sees them and seals it behind him. Badly. The design now claims Farbauti was related to _Thjazi _of all people. Farbauti stares at him.

Helblindi smiles charmingly at her guests, pointedly not looking at his queen, before bowing his head the appropriate degree. There's the sound of heavy feet and members of the guard trickle reluctantly into the hall.

Tyr straightens, putting the goblet down before it had touched his lips, and looks coldly on at them. Farbauti presses her lips together. Odin stares placidly at her. Freyr sits back heavily and watches in morbid fascination.

The soldiers look nervous. Tyr, being the old war hound he is, doesn't miss it and she suspects it's the only thing staying his blade as he's steadily outnumbered.

The men linger awkwardly in clusters, trying to look as though they _aren't _moving along the walls or sending pleading looks at their prince.

Helblindi's smile becomes decidedly toothier. Conversations start up haltingly amongst the men.

Farbauti drains her wine like a shot and tramps down the urge to demand if he was bullying his soldiers _in front _of her. "Why couldn't you use the door?" She asks instead, deceptively mild. Helblindi starts at being addressed and pats the wall behind him. "You know me, I…love walls?" He tries, forcing the lie through his teeth. "Oh, dear god." She hears someone say, and when Freyr laughs, suddenly and almost helplessly, she realizes it was her.

Helblindi colors. The soldiers around them are talking in the native tongue. "What do we talk about?" she hears one of them hiss. "The Prince's love for walls." another mutters, clearly not intending to be heard, and his entire cluster collapses into howls. Helblindi closes his eyes.

"We have not had the pleasure of being introduced." Freyr notes, leaning toward Helblindi with shark-like amusement.

Farbauti was not known for her mercy. She leaves him to suffer the chatty Vanir.

She waves a hand at the equally confused servant. "Bring drinks for them, as hospitality bids us." The woman's face falls. Helblindi's gaze flickers toward her.

"My Queen?" She asks, shifting her weight nervously. Farbauti frowns at her at the same time she sees Helblindi's shoulders drop in relief. "Best to bring them food instead," he says to the servant, who looks profoundly relieved. "They have patrols to finish yet." She's gone before he can finish speaking.

Farbauti slowly turns her head toward her son. Helblindi bravely continues his conversation with Freyr.

Freyr raises the goblet and Helblindi reaches out and plucks it directly out of his hand. Farbauti's eyebrows shoot into her hairline. Freyr gapes at him. Helblindi takes the drink like a shot. She hears Tyr mutter something about savages to Odin.

"It's, traditional," Helblindi says, speaking so clearly out of his ass Farbauti reaches out and refills her goblet. "For one to offer his…conversational…partner! first drink." And then, because his men are nothing if not loyal, two of them act out exactly that where they're certain Freyr can see them, using the pitcher on the table. Helblindi's smile looks pasted onto his face.

It does not escape Farbauti's notice that the man who drank is immediately escorted from the room. Farbauti drains her goblet again. Helblindi, who had managed to sidle closer to her during his conversation, sends her an openly horrified look.

"Are we supposed to pretend we aren't noticing this?" She hears Tyr ask Odin, once again underestimating her hearing. "He's doing his best." Odin murmurs back and gives his goblet a thoughtful look. Tyr pinches his King. Odin stops looking at his wine and watches one of the soldiers swallow a fish whole without chewing—the soldier then notices him staring, and chokes on it. His friend slaps him in the back. The fish shoots across the hall.

Farbauti reaches for the pitcher. Helblindi snatches it off the table and cradles it to his chest, now gaping at her in _offended _horror.

"What's wrong?" Freyr asks and looks genuinely concerned. "We need to go." Helblindi blurts, voice becoming louder toward the end, and quickly walks through the crowd. Farbauti sighs then stands. "Excuse me." She says blandly.

"I have to ask." Tyr stops her, annoyance bleeding into his sharp features. "What the _fuck _is going on?"

"The halls are open to the public. Any can come and go here as they please." One of the soldiers picks up the unfortunate fish, face twisted in disgust. "If it is a scheme you fear, you would do well to remember I offered my protection to Odin before he came." "Only Odin." Freyr points out, and Farbauti smiles lazily.

"It is no fault of my own if—" "My Queen," Helblindi calls from the exit to the hall, still hugging the pitcher to his chest. The predatory looks slops off Farbauti's face. "Excuse me." She says the same way one might beg _'Kill me.' _

The fish is used as a weapon, with a heavy, wet sounding _thwack! _that follows her into the corridor.

"What," Helblindi starts, unfailingly polite. "the _fuck _is with you and Byleistr eating and drinking questionable things?" "Your brother's strange eating habits aside, why was the wine poisoned?" "You're not going to ask what it was poisoned with?" He asks, miffed. "I'm immune." "You gave birth a day ago. Your constitution is shot."

Farbauti, who was 15 feet and weighed more than the beasts that made up her furs combined, told him as such.

Helblindi, who had had to take a surprise elective on poisons during the "Incident", tells her to at least eat something so when it kicks in, she passes out instead of orphaning him.

"You shouldn't be worried about why it was poisoned, more to how many people knew it was poisoned. They expected your guests to be dead by now, my Queen. There will be consequences."

Farbauti remembers the way her people had watched her guests as though awaiting something. They had not attempted to disobey her because they knew someone else already had.

Farbauti's jaw clenched. Helblindi looks up at her, watching her carefully, coldly, in a way that belied his almost spastic performance before.

"The servant—she knew the wine was poisoned." "She did." Helblindi agrees neutrally. "Yet she nor any others questioned the order, despite me explicitly stating that no harm would come to my guests." It could not have been the doing of one person if so many had known of the scheme that the feast halls stood empty.

_'Who holds enough power in my court, that even my servants would not betray their treachery?'_

He gives her a grim little grin. His teeth are a slash on his face, stark against the deep blue of his skin. It looks like a gaping wound than anything approaching mirth.

"Of course not. It was why I wished to confirm the orders with you." He says.

"After all, who would question orders from the Queen of Jotunheim?"

...

A/N

Please leave a comment: I thrive off your feedback, and I want to hear your thoughts on the direction the plot is taking as well as Jotunheim's world-building: It is, after all, one of the main tags on this story ;)


End file.
